BJP146;s 145;all party146; attendance

The BJP sent Jaswant Singh and its Delhi chief ministerial candidate V K Malhotra to the all-party meeting on terror, convened by the Prime Minister last week. Fingers were raised at the fact that 8220;its top two leaders 8212; L K Advani and Rajnath Singh 8212; had stayed away8221;. While the BJP argued that the duo were campaigning in Rajasthan as per a pre-arranged schedule, there is a story behind how the two leaders who represented the party at the meeting got picked. Arun Jaitley was away in Jammu on some work, while Jaswant Singh, who had been adamant on convening a press conference on Kandahar in the Capital even as the country was battling the Mumbai crisis, had to be handled with care. While there was initially talk of the party sending its 8220;Muslim face8221;, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, others shot it down. The party then settled for Jaswant and Malhotra.