Yatra for India, not for me or BJP or elections: Advani

Before embarking on the second phase of his 38-day journey, Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani on Thursday rejected criticism that through the yatra, he was seeking to repackage himself.

"Frankly, I do not quite understand why I would like to repackage myself. Also, I would wish to stress with all the emphasis at my command that this yatra has nothing to do with LK Advani. Nor even with the BJP or the next elections. It is concerned essentially with India," he said.

Writing in his latest blog, while on a two-day Diwali break from the "anti-corruption" yatra, he said his campaign was aimed at re-infusing among people the confidence they had lost in India's glory due to the "failings" of the United Progressive Alliance government.

"My yatra is to re-infuse confidence in the people that the failings of the UPA should not be allowed to demoralize the country, and that we the people should concentrate on making the twenty-first century India's century in spite of all the failures of the UPA," Advani said.

Blaming the Congress-led coalition for the recent scandals, he said that in the last couple of decades, India had earned a reputation as a remarkable democracy and a country on its way to becoming a major economic power in the 21st century.

Again hammering India's cause, which, he said, had been damaged due to UPA's corruption, he said, "The sense of confidence and self-esteem that had been building up in the people has been seriously undermined because of the happenings of this last year -- numerous scams surfacing, several central ministers being removed and even jailed because of corruption, and the cash-for-votes scandal in which instead of the bribe-givers, it was the whistle-blowers, who had exposed the scandal, who have been put behind bars."