Ironically, the desertion by two MLAs came within days after the party's national president Sharad Yadav, during a State visit, announced that all was well with the party in Gujarat and that it was going to win hands down in Bharuch Lok Sabha by-election, scheduled for November 25.

With MLAs Ramanbhai Chaudharyand Rajendrasinh Patel leaving the JD, the party is now banking, rather heavily, on the charisma of its candidate Chhotubhai Vasava than on the party's appeal as a national force. The party's appeal has got a severe battering from the ongoing battle for supremacy in Karnataka between former prime minister H D Deve Gowda and Chief Minister J H Patel.

Chhotubhai Vasava is a prominent tribal leader in his own right. He says he is still optimistic of a win, but fails to sound convincing, especially so because Ramanbhai Chaudhary, the more powerful of the two deserters, enjoys considerable clout in Mangrol Assembly constituency, which is part of the Bharuch parliamentary constituency.

The Congress says that after Chaudhary's departure, Vasava's political weight has been reduced to half what with his influence limited to his own Assembly constituency Jhagadia.

The two MLAs are said to have left the party because they saw no future for themselves in the JD. The same goes for the party in Gujarat, after theircolleagues in local bodies at Bharuch, Hansot and Jambusar deserted the party some time ago. Incidentally, South Gujarat used to be the strongest JD base in Gujarat. City JD minorities cell president Mudassar Ali Saiyed says, he and his local colleagues might move with Chhotubhai Vasava if the latter decided to quit the party but went on to add, ``at present'' there was no such move.

The RJP which had initiated the move to forge a ``third force'' is keeping its cool. It says that this is not a serious problem. Madhusudan Mistry, State RJP president, said the BJP is fast losing ground and would be nowhere in the picture in the next elections. The fight would be between us (the third force) and the Congress, he predicts.

The Leftists, another component of the ``third force'', never had much of a base in Gujarat. They even failed to cash in on the unrest caused by large-scale unemployment by closure of mills.