New Delhi: BJP veteran Yashwant Sinha on Tuesday urged sidelined seniors L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi to "speak up in the national interest", slamming the Narendra Modi government and painting a grim picture of the country.

"The interest of the country supersedes that of the party, just as the interest of the party supersedes the interest of an individual. I am appealing specially to Advaniji and Joshiji to take a stand in the national interest and ensure that the values they have made such unparalleled sacrifices to uphold are protected and preserved for future generations and corrective steps are taken in time," Sinha wrote in an article published in The Indian Express.

Sinha, a former finance minister, termed the article titled "Dear friend, speak up" an "open letter" to BJP leaders.

Advani and Joshi - who have been included in the margdarshak mandal, an advisory panel that is a euphemism for an old-age home formed after Narendra Modi and Amit Shah took over - have not yet responded.

A source close to Advani said the leader had read the article but would not react to it. "It is not a letter addressed to Advaniji. It is a newspaper article and Advaniji has nothing to react to it, though he has read it," the leader said.

Sinha accused the Modi government of failure on all fronts, domestic and foreign, and collapse of democracy in the party.

Sinha urged BJP leaders to speak up, underlining that "future generations are unlikely to forgive" them if they did not. "I do not know how many of you will get the ticket for the next Lok Sabha elections but if previous experience is any guide, half of you at least will not. The chances of your winning the election, even if you get the ticket are fairly remote. In the last Lok Sabha elections the BJP had secured only 31 per cent votes; 69 per cent was polled against it. So, if the Opposition unites, you will be nowhere," he wrote.

Sinha claimed that he had backed Modi to the hilt after the big mandate to the party in 2014, hoping for glorious days for the country.

"The government has now completed nearly four years in office, presented five budgets and used up all the opportunity available to it to show results. At the end of it, however, we seem to have lost our way and the confidence of the voters," Sinha wrote.

He said the economy was in a bad shape, corruption had reared its ugly face in the form of bank scams, women were unsafe like never before, the weaker sections were exposed to atrocities and democratic institutions were under threat. Sinha slammed Modi for reducing Parliament to the "level of a joke".

"Institutions of democracy have been demeaned and denigrated. Parliament has been reduced to the level of a joke. The Prime Minister did not even once sit down with senior leaders of the Opposition parties in Parliament when the just-concluded budget session was being disrupted in order to find a way out. Then he fasted to shift the blame to others," he wrote.