It was neither a modified draft nor a forceful intervention by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee that resolved the crisis in the Bharatiya Janata Party, triggered off by its president Lal Kishenchand Advani's resignation. It was good old Vaastu Shastra that did the trick, if party insiders are to be believed.
Frustrated by a series of unfortunate developments in the party beginning with its stormy petrel Uma Bharati's open defiance of the party leadership in full media glare, party managers were on the lookout for a panacea to the ills plaguing the party when they hit upon the ancient science of creating harmony between a building and its environment.
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Vaastu experts scanned the sprawling 11, Ashoka Road headquarters of the party and found that the problem lay in its main hall where crucial meetings of the party as also its daily briefings are held, sources said.
They found that at all party meetings, particularly the controversial ones, the seating arrangement was such that senior leaders sat facing the south, while the office faced north, which they felt was a 'conflicting position'.
Hence, at Friday's crucial meeting of the BJP Parliamentary Board, office-bearers and chief ministers of the BJP-ruled states called to discuss Advani's resignation, the senior leaders were made to sit facing east while the office-bearers sat facing north.
Party officials said they were forced to make the changes on Friday after Tuesday's deliberations on Advani's resignation failed to deliver the goods.
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When media persons asked party vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi about the changes, he merely said it was meant to provide more space.
To a question why the party leaders were kept in the dark about the new seating arrangement, a BJP official said: "We
did not want to take the risk. If the meeting had failed, we could have been shown the door."
