Ujjain, Jul 22 (HT) : At a time when Narendra Modi’s rising status as the BJP’s face for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls is the talk of the town, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that party patriarch LK Advani is the supreme leader of the BJP.

 “Advaniji is our supreme leader, Advaniji and Atalji. I say this and everyone in the party says this,” Chouhan said in an interview at Ujjain, “He is our mentor. Many like Shivraj Singh have been mentored and nurtured by him.”

Chouhan is in this temple town to flag off his Jan Ashirwad Yatra to mark the launch of his Madhya Pradesh assembly poll campaign. Modi has not found a place on the posters of the yatra which has faces of other central leaders.

Significantly, Advani was unhappy that the party had ignored his plea to have a committee parallel to the Modi-headed central campaign committee. It was believed that the patriarch wanted to balance Modi’s primacy in the party. He had also praised Shivraj for pulling MP out of its status of a Bimaru state, which was also seen as part of his attempt to tone down the BJP’s Modi pitch.

Asked if Advani was no longer in the race, Chouhan said the parliamentary board of the party would take a call on who would be its PM candidate. He showered praise on the party’s central leadership, “Atalji is our aradhya (venerable). Advaniji, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, MM Joshi, our party chief Rajnath Singh and Ananth Kumar -- our central leadership has done a great job.” In this, incidentally, he mentioned all the central leaders except for Modi.

The simmering tension within the party’s top leadership on Modi’s rise could also be gauged from the fact that posters of Shivraj’s yatra in Ujjain depicted all top leaders except Modi. He had an explanation for this, “Modiji’s face isn’t there as this yatra is on local issues. Otherwise, he is our senior leader and campaign committee chief. We’ll invite him here for campaigning.”

Insisting that he was a ‘small’ party worker who had just fulfilled the task entrusted to him, Chouhan -- who sees his understated status as his USP -- said the polls in MP would be fought on the BJP’s good work in lifting the state out of its backward status in 10 years. He added that national issues like the Chinese incursions and corruption would also be important.

Dressed in a trademark kurta, Chouhan began the day by offering prayers at the Mahakaleshwar temple here. Sushma Swaraj was expected to be here with him but her plane had to be diverted to Jaipur due to a technical snag. She was expected later in the day.