Thiruvananthapuram, July 23: The bubble has burst. The BJP, the "party with a difference", is frantically looking for cover in Kerala in the aftermath of the alleged involve-ment of party workers in a medical seat allotment scam that has rocked the state unit.

With the report of a party investigation into the allegation being leaked to the media, infighting, so far kept under wraps by the BJP, has come out in the open.

Daggers are drawn with senior leader and Kerala unit general secretary M.T. Ramesh hinting at a "larger conspiracy" against him by certain leaders. Ramesh's name has been dragged into the corruption charges that have been made in the wake of the scandal.

He is considered one of the strong contenders to replace current president Kummanam Rajasekharan, who has not been effective in leading the party to the expectations of the central leadership.

The corruption charges and the subsequent revolt within the Kerala BJP have come at a time party president Amit Shah has been making an "ambitious move to conquer the state in the next general election".

Even as the BJP's Malayalam mouthpiece, Janmabhumi, yesterday called for vigilance against renegades in a hard-hitting piece, the central leadership, at the behest of the RSS, has decided to set up a sub-committee to oversee the functioning of the state unit. The panel will also keep a tab on the financial dealings of senior leaders.

Shah had reportedly conveyed his unhappiness with the developments in the state in a telephone conversation with Rajasekharan.

Janmabhumi, while going gaga about Narendra Modi's corruption-free government, has demanded a probe no less than by the National Investigation Agency into the alleged medical seat scam. It also wants to know how the party's investigation report was leaked to the media.

R. Shaji, the owner of SR Medical College & Research Center that is based in Varkala in the southern Kollam district, had complained that he had handed over Rs 5.6 crore to R.S. Vinod, a BJP Yuva Morcha leader and head of the party's cooperative cell in Kerala, to get Medical Council of India recognition for the Kerala Medical College & Hospital set up in Cherpulassery in Palakkad district.

The money was reportedly routed through hawala to one Satish Nair in Delhi, who claims to be close to Modi.

Shaji had also named Rakesh Sivaraman, one-time private secretary of Rajasekharan, as being party to the deal.

The private secretary of the BJP-nominated MP from the Anglo-Indian community, Richard Hay, too had admitted to meeting Shaji at the time of filing the complaint.

A two-member committee set up by the party to look into the allegations has indicted Vinod, who has now been expelled from the party. This is the second time Vinod has been thrown out.

This is not the first time the Kerala BJP has got embroiled in a scandal. When the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government was in power at the Centre, the Kerala unit had been caught in an alleged nationwide petrol pump allocation scam.

Over 3,850 petrol pumps and gas agencies had allegedly been allotted to BJP leaders, workers and their family members all over the country. In Kerala, the Rs 18-crore scandal had come to light mainly because of factional feud in the BJP.

Many party workers who did not get allotments aired their grievances to the media. Some BJP leaders who had allegedly collected the cash had apparently deposited only Rs 2 crore to the party fund, pocketing the rest of the money. The "institutionalised corruption and racketeering" had cost the party badly in a parliamentary bypoll in Thiruvananthapuram.

As during Vajpayee's time, even now the Kerala BJP is divided mainly into two camps led by former presidents P.K. Krishnadas and V. Muraleedharan. The state Congress unit too is split into two groups vying for supremacy.

The central BJP leadership had deliberately brought in Rajasekharan, a hardcore RSS loyalist, to outwit these factions within the state unit. But it seems that it has only aggravated the situation, with the two factions ganging up against Rajasekharan and the "dominance" of the RSS over the party.