DHAKA: As it prepares for the ministry-making exercise in anticipation of a win in the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP leadership is seeking to figure out what to do with party stalwarts LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi.

Both are decades senior to the party’s PM candidate Narendra Modi and the leadership is not sure whether they will like to work in his Cabinet.

Though Advani is likely to continue as chairman of NDA, the position, with Modi occupying the PMO essentially on the strength of his mass appeal, will pale before the power the veteran had wielded as the number two in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime.

Joshi, along with Vajpayee and Advani, was part of the troika which guided the party in the early 1990s.

In fact, Modi had accompanied Joshi when the latter undertook his 47-day Bharat Ekta Yatra to hoist the Tricolour at Lal Chowk in Srinagar in defiance of prohibitory orders.

The equations between them and Modi have since drastically changed, with the PM candidate emerging as the new saffron talisman who, going by exit poll forecasts, may lead BJP to power at the Centre after a decade-long power drought.

Advani and Joshi had opposed Modi being designated the PM candidate, but were overruled.

With no position commensurate to their standing available outside the government, the party leadership is struggling to get its arm around the issue, reports The Times of India.

BDST: 1212 HRS, MAY 14, 2014