Shimla: Jaswant Singh has left the BJP and Shimla, in that order. But the chaos at the party's chintan baithak hasn't subsided.
A report on the party's defeat in the general election is said to have top leaders LK Advani, Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh running for cover.
The report, authored by party leader Bal Apte, is so controversial that the BJP says it doesn't exist. "There is no such report," general secretary Arun Jaitley remarked, in clipped tones, at a press conference on Thursday.
But NDTV got a copy of the report 10 days ago. And its indictment is unflinching: Advani's big mistake was to call Manmohan Singh a weak prime minister in his campaign. Atal Behari Vajpayee was missed in the campaign.
The BJP's campaign slogans on price rise, and internal security failed to impress voters. Narendra Modi's visit to UP and Varun Ganshi's hate speech polarized Muslim voters against the party.
And the biggest cause for the BJP's defeat is identified as infighting which translated into unenthusiastic party cadres.
With every senior member attacked, the report has the chintan baithak stumped. All this as it confronts a huge wave of sympathy for Jaswant Singh.
Commentators agree that the BJP did a huge disservice in how and why it sacked a member who has served it for 30 years.
And so, it seems appropriate that the BJP confronts an uphill task of settling its house among the mountains of Shimla.