Police officers at the Gandhi Maidan after the blasts
When Narendra Modi, the BJP's candidate for prime minister, landed in Patna a little after noon on Sunday he was met on the tarmac by two Gujarat police officers who informed him that there had been a blast at the city's railway station. The cops, BJP leaders said, advised him not to go ahead with his rally at the Gandhi Maidan.
Other BJP leaders joined them and as they talked, sources said, news of another blast, this time at Gandhi Maidan came in.
BJP president Rajnath Singh, who was in his hotel close to the park and could actually see the site of the blast, was holding his own consultations with other party colleagues.
Five other blasts followed. But Mr Modi and the other BJP leaders decided they would go ahead with the rally, said sources, because they did not want the focus to shift to the blasts. They also reportedly decided that Mr Modi should not be seen as cancelling his date with Patna.
BJP leader Arun Jaitley said today that there were reports of intelligence agencies warning the Bihar government of a possible strike when Mr Modi visited Patna, but that nobody from the state police informed the BJP about whether his rally should be delayed or cancelled.
"We had decided how to handle the crowd without the advice of the Bihar Police. No one from Bihar Police spoke to us. We did not want to create panic," said Mr Jaitley.
Mr Modi's security men, said sources, drew up a blueprint for an evacuation plan for politicians on stage in case of an attack. A chief concern was the fact that there were no barricades at the ground, no metal detectors for the six entrances and people were not being frisked.
The BJP leaders decided, said the sources, that the blasts would not be mentioned in speeches to prevent panic. So Mr Modi's long address had no mention of the serial blasts. At the end of the speech he asked people to be calm and reach home safely.
Mr Jaitley's comments today contradict Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's claim that his government had been given no warning by either state or central intelligence agencies. The BJP has accused Mr Kumar of "gross criminal negligence" in lax security arrangements.