After Bihar rout, senior BJP leaders Advani and Joshi take on Modi-Shah

New Delhi Two days after the BJP was routed in Bihar the partys old guard including LK Advani on Tuesday took on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah demanding a thorough review of the debacle but said it cant be done by those who were responsibleIn a virtual challenge to Modis leadership who became the prime minister in May 2014 former party presidents Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi former union minister Yashwant Sinha and former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Shanta Kumar said the Bihar defeat showed that the BJP had learnt nothing from its crushing defeat by the AAP in Delhi in FebruaryFormer Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani and PM Narendra Modi File PicTo say that everyone is responsible for the defeat in Bihar is to ensure that no one is held responsible said the brief hardhitting statement signed by Sinha on behalf of the four leadersIt shows that those who would have appropriated credit if the party had won are bent on shrugging off responsibility for the disastrous showing in Bihar it said in a clear reference to Modi and Shah who were the BJPs faces visavis the Grand Alliance of Chief Minister Nitish KumarThe statement followed a meeting of the leaders at Advanis residence and then at Joshis where former central minister Arun Shourie who has blamed Modi Shah and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for the Bihar defeat was also present along with former BJP ideologue KN GovindacharyaThe result of the Bihar election shows that no lesson was learnt from the fiasco in Delhi the statement saidAdvani and the others said that a review of the Bihar rout where the Bharatiya Janata Party won just 53 of the 243 assembly seats must not be done by the very persons who have managed and who have been responsible for the campaigning in BiharIn an obvious reference to Modi and his confidant Shah it said a thorough review must be done of the reasons for the defeat as well as the way the party is being forced to kowtow to a handful and how its consensual character has been destroyedThe statement said the principal reason for the partys defeat in Bihar is how the party has been emasculated in the last yearThe statement came hours after Home Minister Rajnath Singh a la Jaitley on Monday said that Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat were not to blame for the disaster in Bihar where the JDU RJD and Congress won a whopping 178 seatsThe prime minister cant be blamed for the defeat in Bihar Rajnath Singh said It is the BJPs and NDAs electoral loss not the PMs as a leaderJaitley had expressed similar views a day earlier adding that there was no question of removing Shah as the BJP president because he had led the party to victories in other states after the Lok Sabha battleBut voices of discontent have been steadily mounting in the BJP since the Bihar results came out on SundayOn Tuesday Bhola Singh became the fifth BJP MP to blame Modi for the defeatThe Begusarai MP said the rampant use of unparliamentary language by Modi and other party leaders during the election campaign harmed the BJP leading to its defeatThere was no logic to raise issues such as beef and that firecrackers would be burst in Pakistan if the BJP loses he said All these resulted in our defeatThe other four MPs who have found fault with Modi and Shah directly or indicrectly for the Bihar rout are Shatrughan Sinha Patna Saheb Hukum Deo Narain Yadav Madhubani RK Singh Ara and Ashwani Kumar Choubey BuxarAdvani credited with building the BJP since it was left with just two Lok Sabha seats in 1984 has been mostly sidelined since Modi took charge of the partys campaign committee and later the governmentBut those affected by Modis style of functioning continue to look upon him as their mentorThere was no formal reaction from the party to the old guard who enjoyed senior posts before Modi took the national stageBut BJP spokesman Nalin Kohli told CNNIBN that a review of the Bihar result was already on and the party would respond to Advani and others if needed