The trouble was as usual about power and not policy and arose because L.K. Advani told a TV anchor that he had proposed his rival Vajpayee’s name for prime minister last time but next time round did not expect the favour to be returned.

Advani then admitted that he was keen to be prime minister and invoked British parliamentary conventions to strengthen his claim. Is it not usual for the Leader of the Opposition to become prime minister when his party wins?

The interview sent the BJP’s obscure, almost invisible president, Rajnath Singh, into a very public tizzy and he rushed off to assure Vajpayee that he was still numero uno. He also seemed slightly put out at being dismissed as a prime ministerial candidate without realising that the very idea of him as India’s prime minister is laughable.

You may say that if that humble peasant Deve Gowda could be prime minister then why not a humble Thakur, and you would be right. But the thought of Rajnath Singh as prime minister remains laughable.

As for Advani and his high hopes, all that can be said is that if he lowered his sights for a moment he might notice that the once mighty party of Hindutva has crumbled.

If there are young Lok Sabha MPs in the ranks, they sit so far back in the benches as not to be seen, while a small group of Rajya Sabha MPs spends most of the time popping in and out of TV studios, holding forth on every issue under the sun.

The paucity of talent is emphasised every time Vijay Kumar Malhotra, as party spokesman, takes centrestage.

Not once in three years of being our major opposition party has the BJP shown that it understands the issues of the moment and has a worthwhile viewpoint.

Its performance in Parliament has been disgraceful and disruptive.

Every time there is an important debate, BJP MPs have evaded participation and behaved like street fighters instead of lawmakers. What is the point of walking out or descending into the well of the house when it would be so much more effective to articulate an opinion?

There are important issues at hand. On the nuclear deal Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha have expressed their opposition in articles in the newspapers. Fine. But, would it not be more useful for the debate to take place in Parliament?

Last week there was disruption because Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Muslims should have “first claim on resources.” It is an unfortunate approach to economic development and needs to be challenged, and there are those who had hoped that the party of Hindutva would do so in the Lok Sabha.

Instead, there was disruption and the moment passed. There have been other moments. The Sonia-Manmohan government has been bullied by its Marxist friends into abandoning all attempts at privatisation and slowing down the process of economic liberalisation. The BJP has remained silent.

On OBC reservations, when students took to the streets to fight against a patently retrograde measure, they hoped for support from our major opposition party. It did not come and last week a 27 per cent quota for OBCs in central government colleges was quietly passed in the Lok Sabha with no opposition from a party that believes casteism divides the Hindu vote.

The saddest consequence of the power struggle between the party’s aged leaders is that nobody seems to be paying attention to strengthening the organisation.

Those formerly “selfless” RSS cadres who boasted of being able to march miles into the wilderness of rural India living on water and channa are now more frequently seen in government offices in BJP states, demanding their share of power and pelf.

Otherwise, they stir up dissension, so that BJP chief ministers often find themselves besieged by their own people.

In the old days there would be powerful leaders in Delhi who could intervene to stop this kind of greedy behaviour. Now there is nobody. Rajnath Singh’s word counts for nothing and the two very, very senior leaders are too caught up in dreams of future power to notice that to become prime minister you have to first have a party that can win a general election. As things stand, it would be a miracle if the BJP managed to hang on to the seats it has, leave alone win enough to decide who the next prime minister will be.