Shimla, New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party's Chintan Baithak ends on Friday, but the big question is - will the party be able to come out with a roadmap for a revival?
The BJP leaders may hotly deny the existence of Bal Apte's report that indicts the top leadership for the poll debacle. But there is no escaping the fact that if the BJP wants to regain lost ground, it cannot ignore the key issues brought out in the Apte report.
And right on top is infighting, which just refuses to go away. The expulsion of Jaswant Singh is unlikely to end what has been plaguing the party, the conflict between those who want to stay in power and those who want to take over.
The other issue that the BJP has to resolve if it wishes to move ahead is the rebellion in Rajasthan over the marching orders issued to former chief minister and Leader of Opposition Vasundhara Raje Scindia.
The wisdom of continuing with Hindutva as a core party ideology has also reportedly been questioned by some of the top leaders mulling the party's future in Shimla.
The other challenge facing the BJP is how to enthuse the cadres, who have been discouraged by the infighting and the airing of differences and grievances in public.
And last but not the least, the BJP has to come up with a strategy that will set right the alienation of Muslim voters.
So far, the only action that the BJP's top leadership has taken is to fix responsibility for the poll loss in Uttarakhand and Rajasthan, by sacking chief minister BC Khanduri and giving marching orders to Vasundhara Raje.
It has also expelled Jaswant Singh for a book and embarrassing the party by criticising it in public.
But now the Bal Apte report is literally blaming the top leaders for the loss. So which way will the party go? Will the Shimla roadmap make any difference to a party that is clearly going through one of its biggest internal crises?