NEW DELHI:

Bhartiya Janata Party patriarch Lal Krishna Advani on Friday lauded former president Pranab Mukherjee for attending the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) event in Nagpur on Thursday. Advani said that Pranab showed grace and goodwill in accepting the invitation. “I warmly commend Shri Mohan Bhagwat ji, Sarsanghchalak of the RSS, for inviting Shri Mukherjee to address the swayamsevaks who completed the third year of training this year. I also heartily congratulate Shri Mukherjee for his grace and goodwill in accepting the invitation,” he said in a statement on Friday.

Advani said that the views shared by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and Pranab at the event had a lot in common and expressed hope that such conversations will help in creating an atmosphere of tolerance, harmony and cooperation.

“There was significant concord and resonance in the views expressed by both leaders. Both of them highlighted the essential unity of India, which accepts and respects all diversities including the pluralism of faiths. Such conversations, conducted in the spirit of openness and mutual respect, will surely help in creating a much-needed atmosphere of tolerance, harmony and cooperation to build an India of our common dreams,” he added.

Yesterday’s visit by Shri Pranab Mukherjee, India’s former President, to the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Nagpur, and his illuminating exposition of the noble idea and ideals of Indian nationalism, are a significant event in our country’s contemporary history.

I warmly commend Shri Mohan Bhagwat ji, Sarsanghchalak of the RSS, for inviting Shri Mukherjee to address the swayamsevaks who completed the third year of training this year. I also heartily congratulate Shri Mukherjee for his grace and goodwill in accepting the invitation.

There was significant concord and resonance in the views expressed by both leaders. Both of them highlighted the essential unity of India, which accepts and respects all diversities including the pluralism of faiths.

As a lifelong swayamsevak of the RSS, I believe that these two national leaders have truly set a praiseworthy example of dialogue transcending ideological affiliations and differences.

I have had the pleasure and privilege of knowing, and working closely with, Shri Pranab Babu in and outside Parliament. His own reflective nature, combined with his long and varied experience in public life, have made him a statesman who strongly believes in the necessity of dialogue and cooperation among people of various ideological and political backgrounds.

I am happy that, under the leadership of Shri Bhagwat ji, the RSS has expanded and intensified its efforts to reach out to various sections of our nation in the spirit of dialogue.

Such conversations, conducted in the spirit of openness and mutual respect, will surely help in creating a much-needed atmosphere of tolerance, harmony and cooperation to build an India of our common dreams.

A day after BJP national president Amit Shah met Shiv Sena pramukh Uddhav Thackeray as a part of his ongoing ‘Sampark for Samarthan’ campaign, the junior of the ruling coalition reiterated that it will contest the next year’s general elections alone. On Wednesday evening, when Amit Shah walked into Uddhav Thackeray’s residence Matoshree in Mumbai, he knew he had a tough task at hand. BJP’s ties with Shiv Sena, its oldest ally, have grown frosty in the recent past. The relations between the two alliance partners have come to such a pass that the two parties even contested the recently held bypolls in Maharashtra against each other, and almost lost both seats. Shiv Sena has also announced that it will no longer fight the Lok Sabha elections together in 2019 or beyond.

Amit Shah met Thackeray in Mumbai in an over-hour long closed-door meeting. Shah was present at Matoshree for over two and a half hours along with Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Sena leaders. Shah and Thackeray then had a one-to-one meeting for around 90 minutes, reports said. However, Shah’s outreach does not appear to have mended any broken fences.

Notably, a day ahead of the scheduled meeting between Shah and Thackeray, Raut told FinancialExpress.com that the BJP leadership’s outreach was “too little too late”. Raut had said on Tuesday that the Sena has taken a decision that contest all elections alone and attributed BJP’s move to seek an appointment with Udahav Thackeray as a fall out of the party’s loss in bypolls. “For ‘sampark’ we had to wait for four years… and to start this ‘sampark abhiyan’, BJP had to lose several bypolls,” he said, asserting that there was no change in the Shiv Sena’s stand that it will fight the 2019 Lok Sabha elections alone.

The BJP and Shiv Sena are at loggerheads for last few years. Their relationship deteriorated further last month during the bypolls. The two parties contested elections separately. In Palghar Lok Sabha bypoll, the Shiv Sena lost to the BJP, prompting its angry chief to announce that the party will contest next year’s Lok Sabha elections solo. The party was so angry that it even called the BJP its ‘biggest political enemy’.

Currently, Shiv Sena is a part of BJP government both at the Centre and in Maharashtra. While in Modi Cabinet, the party has only one representation, there are 12 ministers in the Devendra Fadnavis government.