Union minister of Road Transport Highways & Shipping, Shri Nitin Gadkari

This meeting came about as it appeared that Union Home Minister and former party president Rajnath Singh was against taking any action against those airing their views in public as suggested earlier by Union Minister and senior party leader Nitin Gadkari.

Jyotiraditya Scindia, a leader of the opposition Congress party, said the BJP must end campaigning on issues that fracture the country along religious lines.

Singh, a former party President, was not averse to dissenting opinion being expressed within the party fora and felt that corrective steps should be taken rather than crushing it.

Beyond embarrassing Mr Modi and Mr Shah, it is not clear whether they will be able to force a change in the leadership of the BJP, unless they are joined by the party’s younger and more significant leaders.

It added that a review “must not be done by the very persons who have managed and who have been responsible for the campaign in Bihar”.

Naidu’s statement comes just days after BJP veterans LK Advani, MM Joshi, Yashwant Sinha and Shanta Kumar demanded that accountability be fixed for the Bihar poll defeat. On Thursday, Sinha said, “Since the party decided that Amit ji will hold seven rallies in December, the November 30 rally was called off. BJP’s Bengal chief Rahul Sinha said, “We have suggested that the PM hold a rally in Bengal on January 12 (Swami Vivekananda’s birth anniversary) or January 23 (Netaji’s birth anniversary)”.

“Some of our senior leaders have raised certain issues”.

He additionally identified that the BJP had misplaced elections up to now, too. “It has by no means been the tradition of the party to blame any particular person for the failure of the party”, he stated.

Parliamentary affairs minister M. Venkaiah Naidu was quoted as telling journalists in Bangalore that the BJP would “take note” of the “views and concerns” raised by Advani and the others.

A few observers say Modi has put off pushing through contentious reforms ahead of the Bihar and other state polls for fear of losing votes, such as a land acquisition bill to make it easier for firms to buy farmland. “We need to find out what went wrong, who were responsible”, he said.

Former RSS ideologue K N Govindacharya dissociated himself with the attack by party veterans on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) top brass for the Bihar debacle and said the senior leaders should have discussed the matter internally.

He has been accused of undermining politicians in his party by acting as chief campaigner in local elections, and bypassing cabinet colleagues by making decisions for them. But as incidents of extreme intolerance increased, culminating in the Dadri lynching before the Bihar polls, it was the Moody’s, which once endorsed Modi’s leadership for better economic growth in India, warned that development won’t be possible without tolerance and peace. Jaitley also observed in another interaction with the media that there would be no impact of the Bihar results on the image of Modi.