No age bar for BJP candidates; Advani, Joshi likely to contest LS polls

New Delhi, March 9 (IANS): There would be no bar of 75 years for BJP leaders willing to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, the party's top decision-making body - the parliamentary board - decided at its marathon meeting on Friday night. While there was no official statement by the Bharatiya Janata Party on the decision, sources in the party confirmed the development which would pave the way for party veterans like LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Shanta Kumar and others to contest the polls. Sources said that party veterans have been authorised to take a call whether they would contest the polls or not. However, the age bar of 75 would continue to hold for party and government positions. The meeting, attended among others by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP chief Amit Shah and other members of the parliamentary board, also discussed the criteria for ticket distribution to sitting MPs. Advani, currently the oldest member of the Lok Sabha at 91 years, has represented the Gandhinagar constituency since 1991 and has been winning all the last five general elections by big margins. If Advani contests, he would become the oldest MP ever to fight the Lok Sabha elections after Ram Sunder Das of the Janata Dal-United, who won from Hajipur in 2009 at age 88 and ended his stint at the age of 93. Besides Advani, party veterans Joshi (84), Shanta Kumar (85), Kalraj Mishra (77) and Bhagat Singh Koshyari (77) are also likely to be fielded in the Lok Sabha polls, the sources said. Advani and Joshi, considered three top leaders of BJP after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, did not find a place in BJP's highest decision-making body, the Parliamentary Board, when Amit Shah took charge as the BJP President. Instead he created a 'Marg Darshak Mandal' that comprises Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Shah himself as well as Joshi and Advani. The change in BJP's position on veteran leaders is being seen as a move giving weightage to 'winnability' of candidates than their age. This also comes in the wake of opposition parties joining hands ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. The sources said the move was well-calculated as the BJP does not want to trigger any controversy by denying the veterans a ticket.