As invectives and innuendos by parties and candidates are growing sharper and louder in the run-up to India’s general elections, the split voices in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the principal opposition party in the just dissolved parliament, too are getting louder. Jaswant Singh, a member of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s cabinet, is contesting the election as an independent from Rajasthan’s Barmer district bordering Pakistan’s Sindh province after being denied a party ticket. For his sins of omission or commission, which include his admiration for Mr Jinnah as a secular leader in his book on Pakistan’s founder, he has been expelled from the party for six years.Another admirer of Mr Jinnah’s secularism, former deputy prime minister L K Advani, was denied the party ticket from his preferred constituency of Bhopal and instead made to accept the Gandhinagar seat from Gujarat under the shadow of Gujarat chief minister and the party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, once Advani’s protégé. The humiliation of Advani packed in this arrangement is writ large and is out on the national scene for all to see. Both Singh and Advani are the party’s known faithful adherents and only mildly appreciative of Mr Jinnah’s secular image but that is enough fire material for their detractors. Advani is the bigger faithful of the two, having been the man behind the 1990 cross-country rathyatra (chariot ride — in fact, a Toyota mobile) that later led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in December 1992. The event also catapulted the party into its best ever ranking of 182 seats in parliament in 1998 from a low of just two seats in 1984.The party, of course, is now saluting the rising star Modi, sidelining the older veteran. Yet, despite all that ingratitude and humiliation, the old man is not beyond new tricks. He seldom loses any opportunity to remind the party and its new star of his heartfelt disenchantment. Only this week (Monday) he rubbed in the point at a public gathering in Maharashtra that Modi is not the only BJP chief minister who has scored a hat trick in state elections. There are two others as well — namely Shivraj Singh Chouhan of Madhya Pradesh who offered him the Bhopal ticket and Raman Singh of Chhattisgarh state. Over in Jaisalmer, reacting to the treatment meted out to him, Jaswant Singh said there was “total confusion” in the party over the norms and values it stood for. “A party that cannot afford its most loyal adherents even the very basic courtesies and puts petty whims of individuals (like current president Rajnath Singh and his clique) before the greater good of the people, has certainly lost its vision and frittered away its virtues for temporary political gains. To what end, only time will tell.”An embittered leader, Singh said the BJP, which he joined at its foundation in 1980, was no longer what its founders Vajpayee, Advani and others including himself had envisioned. Singh’s wife, Sheetal Kanwar, said that her husband had helped Rajnath Singh become party president for the first time and this is how he has paid back. “Rajnath Singh is an opportunist,” she bitterly added.Singh’s defiance of the party has put the spotlight on Rajasthan politics. It has become a prestige issue not just in Rajasthan but is seen as a test case for the party’s fortunes nationally. The Barmer-Jaisalmer constituency has a substantial chunk of voters who belong to the Pir Pagaro sect across the border in Sindh. Singh’s popularity among this bloc of voters could swing the election here in his favour.Singh’s family is well rooted in the Barmer-Jaisalmer area where the BJP has given the ticket to an outsider, Sonaram Chaudhry, a Congress party defector. The force behind Singh’ ouster from the party is none other than the newly elected Rajasthan chief minister Ms Vasundhra Raje of the old princely family. However, given the caste equations and his own standing, Singh is confident of teaching the BJP’s ruling clique a befitting lesson.With over 16 lakh voters and spread over the two border districts of Barmer and Jaisalmer, the constituency is one of the largest in the country. It has a sizeable presence of the Sindhi and Muslim community, which has a little over two lakh voters in the region. Jats and Rajputs are the other dominant communities, who together account for nearly five lakh votes. The split in Jat voters who traditionally support Congress and BJP could boost Singh’s chances with additional support from Rajputs and minority communities.Singh, a Thakur from Jasol village in Barmer, is banking upon his son-of-the-soil image. And, if he wins, it could be the last hurrah for the 76-year-old veteran, who ironically is fighting from this seat for the first time. He has won earlier elections from seats as far as Darjeeling, his last in the just dissolved parliament. Singh was expelled earlier also when he stood from Darjeeling against the party wishes but was re-admitted after winning the seat. Victory this time will be doubly sweet in view of his defiance of the party and second expulsion. Subhash Chopra is a freelance journalist and author of Partition, Jihad and Peace