This is not the first controversy Jaswant has been at the centre of. Indeed, no other BJP leader has courted so many controversies. The party has never been able to live down the Kandahar hijack when Jaswant as foreign minister accompanied released terrorists to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Then there was the furore and ridicule the party invited when he in his book, A Call to Honour (2006), alleged there was a mole in the office of former PM, P.V. Narasimha Rao. A minor scandal erupted when he was charged with illegal drug possession in October last year when he offered kesar, traditionally an opium-laced drink, to guests at his ancestral home in Rajasthan. This year, two minor little controversies hovered over him. In March, in an interview to this magazine, he’d said, “I would not defend Operation Parakram” and after the Lok Sabha defeat launched an attack on Arun Jaitley. Yet the polo and golf-playing former armyman survived in the BJP because he brought a certain cross-party acceptability. Many were just as impressed with his stance and that baritone.