A day after he was overlooked by the BJP and tripped by Narendra Modi for all purposes, BJP’s veteran leader LK Advani resigned from all posts in the party. According to reports, party president Rajnath Singh has refused to accept the resignation letter.

Read Advani’s resignation letter as PDF  attachment at the end of story

While he resumed work after a couple of days, after skipping the party’s national executive meeting in Goa purportedly due to a stomach ailment, one of the day’s first things he perhaps did was to shoot off a letter to Rajnath Singh. Without naming Modi, or his appointment at the Goa meet on Sunday as the party’s 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign committee chairman, the octogenarian wrote: “Most leaders of ours are now concerned just with their personal agendas.” The hint, though, did not escape, coming as it does days after he backed Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan over Modi, and a long-drawn effort by party leaders to convince him to appoint Modi as the poll campaign panel chief instead of announcing his name as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate.

Recalling working with the likes of Shyama Prasad Mookerji, Deendayal Upadhyay, Nanaji Deshmukh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee – first in the Jana Sangh and later in the BJP – Advani wrote, “I no longer have the feeling that this is the same idealistic party” created by these giants of Hindu Right.

“I have decided, therefore, to resign from the three main fora of the party, namely, the National Executive, the Parliamentary Board and the Election Committee. This may be regarded as my resignation letter,” he wrote in concluding the short, three-paragraph, one-page letter.

While the silence in the Modi camp was audible – there was no reaction, though the Gujarat CM had reached Ahmedabad on Monday morning – critics are raising an eyebrow at the BJP patriarch suddenly hitting upon “idealism”, rather the fact that it was amiss in the party. One question being raised is, has the “direction in which it( BJP) is going” changed only since Sunday? Did the ship veer off course only after Modi’s appointment in Goa?

The game might have just begun, and the team that might be smiling all the way to the bank is the Congress, which seems to be leaving no stones unturned in furthering the fissures by ostensibly backing Advani.