This last point deserves elaboration. In case of elections early-middle next year, the BJP would not have really known who to make its prime-ministerial candidate and, assuming Narendra Modi got a second term in Gujarat, would not have known how to handle suggestions that he be made the national face of the party. True, in the last general elections Sonia Gandhi, for well-known reasons, had not declared herself to be the Congress’s prime- ministerial candidate, and the BJP could ask ‘Vajpayee vs who’. But no one had any doubt that Sonia was the Congress leader. Is Advani the BJP leader the same way? Is anyone? Those letters and trademark cryptic comments that Atal Bihari Vajpayee keeps dropping unnerve everyone in the party and confuse everyone outside it.

The Congress, in its own wisdom, will possibly give the BJP a breather. The BJP should use this time to fix a long list of problems. It is in a shambles in UP. In MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh it will face anti-incumbency; these days state-level incumbency affects national elections. In Tamil Nadu, it doesn’t have an ally. In Maharashtra, its ally has no problem humiliating it and is known to admire Sharad Pawar’s NCP. And at the Centre, let us remind the party again, it doesn’t really have a leader.