Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje (Press Trust of India photo)
To justify that top BJP leader Vasundhara Raje does not need to resign as Rajasthan Chief Minister, the party is likely to present an argument from her legal team that she changed her mind at the last minute about backing the immigration appeal of disgraced cricket magnate Lalit Modi.
"Every human being wears multiple hats. Ms Raje gave the statement in her personal capacity, not in her capacity as Leader of Opposition in Rajasthan," said BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli, referring to the statement that Ms Raje provided in 2011, in which she said the vast investigation in India against Mr Modi was "politically motivated". The affidavit, provided to a UK court, was leaked this week, enabling the Congress to amplify calls for her resignation for supporting a man wanted in multiple criminal cases in India.
Ms Raje has privately defended her case to the BJP's top bosses by arguing that after Mr Modi persuaded her to sign the statement, she had a change of heart as exemplified by the fact that she did not testify for him in a UK court. Without her deposition, the incriminating affidavit amounts to only "a proposed witness statement... intent, but not action," said sources.
But arguments like those are unlikely to tamp down the political controversy, something the BJP concedes privately. Ms Raje, in her affidavit, asked that her identity not be revealed to Indian authorities. Earlier this month, she said she was unaware of the document after Mr Modi outed it in a television interview.
For the BJP, Ms Raje's status as an immensely powerful regional leader adds to the trickiness of how and whether to take any action against her. The party also feels that penalising Ms Raje could embolden the opposition to demand punishment separately for Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj, who has ceded that last year, she intervened to help Mr Modi get urgent travel papers from UK officials to travel to Portugal with his wife for her medical treatment.