New Delhi, June 14: The BJP has reconciled to the inevitability of a formal parting of ways with the Janata Dal (United).

“A formal announcement is all that is awaited. We want it to come from Nitish Kumar (the Bihar CM),” said a source.

Among the big political implications the BJP was looking at was how the “divorce” would play out within its ranks.

Sources said party patriarch L.K. Advani “tried hard” to save the relationship, after telling Nitish and JD(U) president Sharad Yadav that the BJP would not announce Narendra Modi as their prime ministerial candidate without getting the allies on board.

“Advaniji’s words were like an ayurvedic capsule administered to a patient on a ventilator. The BJP-JD(U) alliance is on a ventilator and ayurveda was not the remedy. Nitish and Sharad figured out quickly that Advaniji did not carry his party with him,” a source said.

After Advani dialled Nitish and Sharad on Wednesday, soon after the alliance was beset with a crisis, BJP president Rajnath Singh swung into action and put Nitin Gadkari and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on the job. They were given an “official” brief to say that Modi’s appointment as the campaign committee chief was an internal decision and until the party took a call on who its PM face would be, there was no need for the JD(U) to precipitate an end. “Clearly, our allies saw the writing on the wall and were unprepared to wait any longer,” a source said.

With Nitish’s prospective exit, BJP sources believed that Advani and the few remaining loyalists he was left with could lose their last shield of defence against Modi’s ascendancy.

“Advani was betting on Nitish to arrest Modi’s rise on the secular argument and later let a consensus evolve around him if the NDA was in a position to form a government in 2014. He hoped to buy time and clout for himself and emerge as a strong counterpoint against Modi. Nitish was the weapon because our other allies have more or less accepted Modi,” a source said.

Advani had reportedly Sushma Swaraj and Ravi Shankar Prasad on the save-JD(U) project. But even Sushma, who had a good rapport with the Bihar chief minister, did not speak to him during the ongoing crisis, said sources.

She tweeted today and said, “Only a united Opposition can defeat Congress…Therefore, NDA’s unity is a historical necessity. We must do everything to keep NDA united.”

Prasad, who was not around for the crucial Goa national executive because of an track-two diplomatic assignment in Sri Lanka, was on TV saying, “Things look grave and uncertain (in Bihar).” Usual suspects, Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh, who usually side with Advani in the Modi face-off, were neither seen nor heard.

The clincher was pressure from the Bihar BJP that became increasingly impatient and then intolerant of the JD(U) ever since Nitish rebuffed Modi during the 2010 national executive meet and cancelled a dinner he was hosting for the BJP members after a Modi fan plastered Patna with posters of the Gujarat and Bihar chief ministers holding hands at a 2009 NDA rally. Nitish ensured Modi did not campaign in the Bihar elections.

Sources said the Bihar BJP conveyed to the central bosses that the longer the alliance stayed, the “greater” the “damage” to their party because the core upper caste voters were supposed to be angry with Nitish for his constant barbs at Modi. The state leaders also claimed that Bihar and Odisha were “incomparable”.

The BJP was routed in Odisha after Naveen Patnaik walked out on it before the 2009 elections. “Unlike Orissa, we have a robust organisation and a disciplined cadre everywhere. Our apparatuses have helped the JD(U),” a source claimed.