Many BJP leaders in private, however, said “it would only be a blessing in disguise were Kalyan Singh to leave the party”. “Good riddance,” said a senior leader from the state, even while conceding that “Lodh votes were still with Kalyan”.

Angry party colleagues talk about the fact that even as Kalyan was trying to impress upon the central leadership to remove Ashok Pradhan from Bulandshahr, “he was bargaining with the Samajwadi Party for more seats, after initially being offered Etah, Bulandshahr and Aligarh by them”.

Meanwhile, after a meeting of its poll panel, the BJP declared a list of 18 candidates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, including former Union external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand. The party named three other nominees from Jharkhand, six from Kerala, three from Himachal Pradesh, two from Tripura and one each from Manipur, Chandigarh and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.