Gadkari hardly campaigned in the Gujarat assembly polls, while in the Himachal Pradesh polls, he was sent off to farflung places to address meetings, avoiding Shimla and other towns.
The rank and file in the BJP was clamouring for change despite insistence by the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat to give Gadkari a second term.
The final straw on the camel's back proved to be the emergence of Rahul Gandhi as the vice president of Congress party putting the main opposition party on the defensive.
PTI adds: High drama unfolded in the BJP today on the eve of election of a new party president with Yashwant Sinha procuring a nomination form and Mahesh Jethmalani complaining he is being denied one.
Gadkari, who shared the stage at a party programme in Utan in Maharashtra with senior leader L K Advani, will reach the capital tonight.
Gadkari and Advani were not seen exchanging any word at the programme and the apparent cold vibes reflected the rift within the party on the incumbent getting a second term.
Sinha created a flutter this evening when he procured a nomination form and voters' list from Chief Electoral Officer, Thawar Chand Gehlot. Advani declined to anwser newsmen's questions as to whether Sinha, a former Union Minister, is in the race.
Confirming this, Gehlot said Sinha is the only person to have taken the form from him till now. However, he hastened to add that the forms are easily available on the party website and state headquarters of the BJP.
Earlier in the day, Mahesh Jethmalani said he is being denied a nomination form to prevent him from contesting.
Party veterans point out that despite all the pretence of an election of the BJP President, the stringent provisions of the party Constitution will make it difficult for the forms of Sinha and Jethmalani to be accepted.
A candidate for the BJP Presidential poll should have been an active member of the party for 12 consecutive years and an ordinary member for 15 years. He would also need atleast 20 proposers each from five different state units, which adds upto 100.
While Mahesh Jethmalani fails to qualify, Sinha is unlikely to get 100 proposers from five states.
But there were murmurs within BJP about Advani and his team still being unhappy with Gadkari being given a second term in the wake of charges of dubious funding of the Purti Group with which he has been associated in the past.
The Income Tax authorities created some unease for Gadkari and his camp when they conducted on-field inquiries on some “shell” companies which had invested in Purti Power and Sugar Limited.
Gadkari came out with a prompt statement condemning these inquiries by the IT authorities as “calculated, mischievous and politically motivated”. He described the “highly questionable move” as a “command performance at the behest of its political masters sitting in New Delhi who have hatched a political conspiracy to tarnish his image”.
