Bowing to the advice of vaastushashtra experts, the BJP has shut the main gate to its central office at 11, Ashoka Road, New Delhi. Instead, the second gate, a scant 50 metres from the main gate and which was long in disuse, was opened on March 10.

Party sources said senior leader Dr. Murali Manohar Joshi consulted at least 18 experts on vaastu from across the country .. The 'inauspicious' element was apparently not the main gate itself; a ten-year-old neem tree was identified as the offender.

"Since it was not possible to cut the tree, we decided to close the main gate and requested the visitors to use other one", said one party functionary ...

Said another functionary, "Somebody had pointed it out before but when we formed the government no attention was paid .. and Vajpayeeji was out in 13 days", unshakably convinced that things would be different now that this little point about vaastu has been taken care of ...

The party had even fixed the most appropriate time for swearing in on March 15 between 9.40 am and 10.45 am. Of course, by an apparent oversight, the astrologers had not reckoned with .. Jafram Jayalalitha and her private agenda ...