But the party may have bitten more than it can chew. For the change can only intensify the ongoing war of nerves between a rebellious Kalyan Singh and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. And the leading light of the Ram mandir movement, now unfettered by his chief ministerial job, has sounded the battlecry from Ayodhya.

In a clear signal of his intention to reclaim the identity that propelled him to centrestage in 1990-91, Kalyan Singh blamed BJP's dismal electoral performance in UP on the decision to put its core issues, particularly Ram temple, on the backburner. It had cost the party dear all over the country, he said, adding, ``We sought votes in Atalji's name in these elections but could not exceed our 1998 tally.''

It was his first frontal attack on Vajpayee with whom his relations have always been antagonistic. And he served the PM with a veiled threat for the future by reciting a poem which warns of the limits to patience and suffering. When things reach an extreme, change is imminent but transition to a new order is not smooth, he quoted.

The dark hints in the poem notwithstanding, BJP circles do not expect Kalyan Singh to leave the party to form an OBC axis with Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav. He has burnt his fingers playing caste politics and BJP leaders feel Singh realises the OBC card is Mulayam's trump, not his. With Sakshi Maharaj, his former loyalist now gone over to the SP, donning the mantle of a Lodh Rajput (Kalyan's caste) leader, Kalyan Singh has been squeezed out of the caste game.

He therefore has little option but to revert to his earlier role as chief Ram mandir protagonist.

No wonder then that the central leadership has taken so long to ease him out of the CM's post. At a time when the BJP has discarded its core issues as the price for another term at the Centre, it can hardly afford to have Kalyan Singh trying to whip up the mandir agitation once again in UP.

Unfortunately for the BJP, the outgoing CM has doggedly refused offers of a cabinet berth at the Centre. His obstinacy continues despite several attempts by his mentor, Home Minister L K Advani, to persuade him to come to Delhi in the overall interest of the party and the Government.

Kalyan Singh apart, the BJP has also to deal with its fading influence in UP. Senior BJP leaders have admitted that the appointment of Gupta as the new CM was merely a holding operation. Given his seniority in the party hierarchy and his closeness to the Sangh top brass (he was a student of Allahabad University when RSS chief Rajendra Singh was a professor there), the party is hoping that he will paper over the cracks that have appeared in the state unit of late.

In addition, having been Deputy Chief Minister in the SVD Government headed by Charan Singh in 1967, the central leadership feels he has the necessary experience to restore a semblance of sanity in the tattered administration. The idea is to keep the UP Government going for as long as possible to give the party breathing time to recoup the reverses it suffered in the recent elections.