24 August 2019 19:39 IST

The party has lost not only former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee last year, but also former Union ministers Ananth Kumar, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley in quick succession.

It has been a cruel August from last year to this, for the BJP, with the party losing not only former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee last year, but also former Union Ministers Ananth Kumar, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley in quick succession.

Obituary | Arun Jaitley: A man who played many roles

The annus horribilis for the BJP had been preceded by the early, untimely deaths of former Ministers Pramod Mahajan and Gopinath Munde, leaving a situation where an entire second generation leadership, moulded by Vajpayee and Lal krishna Advani is now no longer around.

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Mr. Jaitley’s death, a loss important in itself, is significant also in the underlining of the loss of this cohort group of leaders.

Former editor of the RSS mouthpiece Organiser, Sheshadri Chari, said that this was a “bridge generation” between the old Jan Sangh headed by Vajpayee, Rajmata Vijaya Raje Scindhia and Sundar Singh Bhandari and a new generation of people, who emerged after the Emergency. “These were all leaders who came up after the Emergency and helped connect Jan Sangh’s ideology in the idiom of modernity and post Emergency sensibilities,” he said.

He added that all these leaders were also both good strategists as well as details people. “If they had survived just five years more, a new generation of leadership could have been groomed,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to take anything away from the new leadership of the party.

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Their energy helped galvanise the BJP to a pole position, and they were also a significant part of proving to the electorate that a non-Congress government could provide stable governance models.

Prime Minister Modi, who considered Mr. Jaitley not just a colleague but a close friend, has effected a generational shift in the government giving Cabinet rank to younger colleagues in both his governments. Even so, the second generation of the BJP, now sadly depleted in strength, had its own vim and vigour, leaving a void in the party.