New Delhi, Bhopal, July 14: Hardliners Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie returned to centre stage today saying the BJP’s “worst fears” had come true, amid signals that the party leadership wasn’t seriously plotting the government’s fall over the nuclear deal.

“There won’t be a government on the evening of July 22,” thundered Sinha as Shourie ripped into the safeguards agreement.

In Bhopal, party chief Rajnath Singh, however, wasn’t all that confident that the Congress-led central coalition would lose the trust vote in Parliament and kept harping on what he called “unfair means” the UPA had adopted after the Left pulled out.

He said if the Manmohan Singh regime survived the confidence vote, the new alliance between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party would turn into a “nightmare” — a “government minus governance”.

Rajnath, who lacked the Left’s belligerence, said while the BJP-NDA would try to defeat the UPA at the confidence vote, it wouldn’t adopt any unfair means, suggesting that the mood in the opposition alliance was it wouldn’t be very unhappy if the government survived.

But he said the Prime Minister should step down and added that his party was prepared to face elections “any time”.

In Delhi, Sinha and Shourie said they felt “sadder than ever before”.

While party spokespersons had claimed the BJP’s only hesitation was about the right to conduct further tests, Sinha said “history will show how wrong we were” in assessing this “historical agreement”.

Asked if their understanding of the subject was better than former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who had endorsed the deal and whom the BJP had hailed as a great scientist, Shourie said: “Don’t go by big names.”

“The written draft is there to be analysed. Kalam had called me but could not give any new argument. He met (L.K.) Advani and failed to bring out anything new. I asked Kalam what new had happened as you were opposing these things earlier?”

Sinha confronted the who-is-more-knowledgeable query by saying “we too know something” about this subject.

“Those who have not studied the subject have been taken for a ride but we cannot be taken for a ride,” he added.

Shourie even challenged the Prime Minister to a debate in Parliament.