New Delhi:
Outspoken BJP leader Yashwant Sinha has joined a club of colleagues who are skipping an important party gathering in Goa. However, unlike them, he has not used health concerns as an excuse for his no-show.
"I don't have 'NaMonia'. I am in perfect health. There can be other reasons for not going to Goa," he said today.
"Na-Monia" is being invoked as the bug that has left a group of the party's senior-most leaders including LK Advani too sick to attend the national executive in Goa, where 300 leaders are meeting. The session is expected to culminate with the announcement that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will be anointed head of the election committee of the BJP, a post seen as a precursor to him being declared the party's prime ministerial candidate.
That likelihood has alienated Mr Advani because he believes that if Mr Modi is the party's face, the oxygen in the room will be sucked up by a debate on the chief minister's secularism.
The veteran leader is reportedly concerned that if the Gujarat chief minister is promoted, the BJP will be forced to spend more time defending Mr Modi's secular credentials than in highlighting scandals of graft to ensnare the government.
Mr Modi is a polarising figure on account of the communal riots in his state in 2002, in which hundreds of Muslims were killed during his first term in office. His severest critics accuse him of complicity in the riots- a charge not proven in court or by different commissions that have investigated the riots.
Jaswant Singh, Shatrughan Sinha and Uma Bharati, all affiliated to Mr Advani, have said they're sick and will not make it to the Goa conference.