Uma Bharti, who was suspended from the primary membership of the Bhartiya Janata Party for her anti-party activities on Wednesday, had taken the blessings of BJP general secretaries Arun Jaitley and Pramod Mahajan before she left for Madhya Pradesh, hoping that this would do the trick for her and she would become chief minister.
"And when things did not go the way she wanted, the two were dubbed 'oxen'," a senior BJP leader told newsmen in New Delhi, minutes after her suspension was announced.
The BJP leader said that she had also told both Mahajan and Jaitley in separate conversations that, after many decades, "I find in you a leader of the vision and character of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru."
When the two exchanged notes they found that Bharti had taken them both for a ride and tried to play on their bloated egos to get their support.
The BJP leaders claimed that having called them names on television channels, Uma called them up on Wednesday morning and referred to them as bhai-saheb. "She was, perhaps, trying to gauge the mood of the party before the meeting of the BJP parliamentary board," said a senior BJP functionary.
The party leaders made it clear that they would rather run the Madhya Pradesh government with 155 MLAs then have 172, including some troublesome members who owe their allegiance to the sanyasin.
This is the second time she has been suspended from the party in last thirteen months. She was suspended on November 11, 2004 when she walked out of the party meeting in the full glare of the television cameras, challenging party president L K Advani to act against her.
She was reinducted into the party after a month after she tendered an apology for her conduct.