Swords are out among the top-rung leadership of the BJP as many leaders and cadres have openly started speaking of replacing Amit Shah, a close friend of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as party president and showing the exit door to him in view of the BJP’s humiliating defeat at the hands of archerival Congress in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in the just-concluded Assembly polls.

BJP leaders and cadres, who had billed the Assembly polls in five States (M.P., Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Telangana) as a ‘curtain-raiser’ to next year’s Lok Sabha polls, are now afraid to face the electorate and the people ahead of April-May’s general elections. It is in this backdrop that voices are raised in the party’s ranks to replace Amit Shah.

Modi-Shah alliance had till recently been hailed as a ‘winning combo’ as it not only led the BJP taste super-succes for four successive times in Gujarat Assembly polls and during the 2014 general elections. After 2014, though, the BJP kept losing all the Lok Sabha by-polls even as it manipulated victories in some State Assembly polls thanks to the shrewd thinking of Amit Shah.

In Karnataka and Telangana, the BJP has flattered to deceive and this has made a few party leaders and a large number of cadres raise their voices against Amit Shah. However, sources close to the top leadership insist that Shah won’t quit at least until next year’s Lok Sabha polls.