Home Ministry sources said Advani sought the half hour meeting to ``understand the President's compulsions'' for rejecting the Cabinet's advice to impose Article 356 in Bihar. He also once again put forward the Cabinet's reasons for its decision.

The BJP's aggressive stand on Bihar is threatening to bring the ruling party into unhappy confrontation with Rashtrapati Bhavan. For the third consecutive day today, BJP leaders questioned Narayanan's wisdom in returning the Centre's recommendation.

Party vice president Kailashpati Mishra warned of a ``civil war'' in Bihar because of the President's ``silence''. He urged Rashtrapati Bhavan to make public Bihar Governor Sunder Singh Bhandari's report on the conditions in the state.

In Delhi, the party asked the Government to bring out a white paper onArticle 356 so that a national debate on the issue could be started.

Party spokesman Venkaiah Naidu said the white paper should give details on the 108 times that the Article has been used and misused -- mainly by the Congress -- by which party, the reasons and who the victims were. He said there was a status paper on President's rule in India, published in 1996, and urged the government to update it so that people could be fully informed.

Naidu accused the Left parties of fighting shy of joining the debate on the issue, and pointed out that the Left had supported the dismissal of the BJP's Gujarat Government in 1996.

The upping of the ante by the BJP on the Bihar issue is borne out of its severe embarrassment at the hands of its own allies as well as the President, all of whom questioned the wisdom of the Centre's decision.

Its anxiety to prove that it was right was underlined by Mishra harping on the ``total constitutional breakdown'' in the state and demanding invocation of Article 356, Mishra saidin Patna that the Governor had discharged his duty by submitting his report to the President.

He also suggested that the President should provide protection to the Governor, pointing out that the latter was being abused inside and outside the state assembly by the ruling RJD. He said effigies of the Prime Minister, Union ministers and Bhandari were being burnt, and the state assembly had adopted a resolution condemning the Governor for recommending President's rule in the state.