Expelled Bharatiya Janata Party leader Uma Bharti's prominent supporter Prahlad Patel resigned from the party on Friday even before his own leader replied to a show cause notice served on her by the party's Parliamentary Board.
According to Bharti's advisors, this indicates that the sanyasin seems all set to float a new regional party in Madhya Pradesh and has closed all doors to a return to the BJP.
A close aide of the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister said Bharti's strong response to Shivraj Singh Chauhan being made the chief minister was due to a fear of a slow political annihilation.
"When Chauhan was declared chief minister and she was made national general secretary it was clear to her that the rest of the second generation had ganged up against her and would make her political future untenable in Delhi," said the aide.
"The Ram-Roti yatra will be instrumental in giving maximum coverage to Bharti and her portrayal of herself as a wronged woman against whom her erstwhile colleagues had ganged up. In short, it will be Mark Antony's speech after slaying of Julius Caesar," said the aide.
The aide asserted that there was ambiguity in the Sangh's response to Uma Bharti's actions as well.
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Ashok Singhal of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad had said, "Jo Ram ke sath, hum uske saath (we are with those who are with Ram)." Bharti's aides believe that although Praveen Togadia came out against the sanyasin, there is no consolidated opinion against her.
Bharti will also use the opportunity to try and woo those in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh who are sympathetic to her to come out in to the open.
"There are those who find people like Pramod Mahajan more worrying than somebody like Uma Bharti," the aide added.
BJP is indisciplined, not I: Uma Bharti
This time however, all this appears in the realm of speculation.
For the temperamental sanyasin, her major weapon appears to be the fact that the second generation of leadership are not too fond of each other either.
"She can still inflict a lot of damage in Madhya Pradesh but to say that she will be like Kalyan Singh, who could not survive outside the party, is premature. She could turn out to be like Vaghela," the aide observed.
