Govindacharya, interestingly, has denied the statement after the sense of outrage exhibited by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on the issue yesterday. Besides him, party president Kushabhau Thakre too asserted that the BJP was commited to implementing the NDA manifesto only.

While terming the media reports ``distorted and misleading'', Govindacharya claimed that all he had stated was that the BJP had left out contentious issues like abrogation of Article 370, a uniform civil code and the Ram temple, from the National Agenda of Governance in 1998 itself.

While maintaining that the BJP was bound by the common manifesto of the NDA, Govindacharya claimed that even if the BJP won a majority on its own it would stillimplement the NDA manifesto.

Party leaders here, however, said that, for the BJP, the NDA manifesto and that of its own were like two drums of a tabla and it needed to beat both drums to keep its cadre and allies in good humour.

The BJP spokesman, Narendra Modi, for the record, refused to join the issue by saying, ``The BJP is contesting the elections in the name of Atal Behari Vajpayee who had been maintaining a kind of continuity in his statements. We would not like to say anything different.''

Party vice-president J P Mathur, on the other hand, claimed that the party would like to evolve a consensus on contentious issues after the elections, even if it got an absolute majority on its own.

This is the first time BJP leaders have spoken of evolving a consensus on issues like the Ram temple and the common civil code. ``There already is a temple in Ayodhya and we only need to give it a facelift which is possible only through consensus,'' Mathur said.

Atal's moderate line on such issues today paiddividends when a Muslim political party -- Bharti Majlis, headed by Babri Masjid movement leader Javed Habib -- came out openly in his support.

Prime Minister Vajpayee has time and again shown his hold over his party functionaries. At times he has been known to pull them up for their inadequacies and gaffes made in public.