At a press conference here, Bommai said that his party has always been against dismissal of State governments recalling that he had himself fought a court case against the dismissal of his government in Karnataka in the eighties.

But when it was pointed out that JD parliamentary board chairman Ram Vilas Paswan, along with Sharad Yadav, had called on President KR Narayanan recently to seek the dismissal of the Rabri Devi government's dismissal, Bommai struggled for a reply to save himself from embarrassment.

``We have honest differences of opinion within the party on this issue. We will discuss the matter in our political affairs committee on September 8,'' he said, and refused to take any more questions on this score obviously realising his fauxpas.

An uncomfortable JD spokesman Mohan Prakash sat by his side.

But this did not stop him from speaking in favour of the Rashtriya Janata Dal. ``We have got political differences with Laloo Prasad Yadav. But I cannot rule out an understanding with his party in the future. We want all secular parties to come together,'' he said. He also made it a point to reiterate his condemnation of the recent CBI raids on the official residence of Rabri Devi.

Bommai's statements clearly bring out the lack of cohesion within the JD on the issue of having a relationship with the RJD. While he and some other leading lights of the party like IK Gujral and S Jaipal Reddy have been perceived as being soft towards Laloo, a faction led by Ram Vilas Paswan have been relentlessly fighting for the ouster of the RJD government in Bihar. In fact, the State unit of the party is solidly behind Paswan and Sharad Yadav in their campaign.

While it suits both Paswan and Sharad Yadav, who hail from Bihar, to take an anti-Lalooline because of local compulsions, JD leaders from other States are aware that without Laloo their secular front would be irrelevant.

This divergence of views is evident in the Left parties as well. The Bihar units of the CPI and CPI (M) want the RJD government to go but not their central leadership. Before the last Lok Sabha elections, the Left had taken an aggressive position against Laloo but after the severe drubbing for the United Front at the hustings it began singing a different tune.