Party office bearers said that Vajpayee, former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh and the partys in-charge for UP, Sunder Singh Bhandari, wanted to handle the UP situation independently, and Advani had therefore been left out. One of them added that Joshi had deliberately been left out because many leaders felt that he promoted factionalism.
Advani and Joshi, who were once the partys triumvirate in UP along with Vajpayee, did not figure this time in the partys poster blitzkrieg either. A BJP leader said a senior office bearer close to Advani wrote 17 letters to Bhandari, who was organising the campaign, asking him to use the formers services. Bhandari did not reply to any one of them. An aide to Advani disagreed that he had been left out, pointing out that Advani was in constant touch with Vajpayee and general secretary Pramod Mahajan every two minutes.
He added that Advani had to go to Gandhinagar on Friday to exercise his franchise in the by-election.
