NEW DELHI: Has the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) campaign for Narendra Modi’s prime ministerial bid hit the doldrums in caste-riven Bihar and Uttar Pradesh? It tried to get the late Shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan’s son to join the party’s procession on Thursday to file Mr Modi’s prime ministerial nomination in Varanasi.

The family, which enjoys an exalted status in the comity of Varanasi’s fabled musicians, refused. Its leaders had earlier let loose a flurry of hates speeches.

And on Friday, the party announced with great aplomb that a scarcely known brother of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had joined the BJP in Amritsar from where senior leader Arun Jaitley is locked in a tough contest against the Congress.

The fact that the public transaction of loyalties took place in the presence of Mr Modi will help Mr Daljit Singh Kohli grab the headlines for some time.

Will he fetch a few votes though, doesn’t look likely. He is variously described in local reports as a stepbrother of the prime minister and a close relative who was not quite a brother. One report said it had embarrassed Dr Singh. The prime minister had on Thursday pooh-poohed the widely reported Modi wave as a “creation of the media”.

An indication that the Modi juggernaut could be in trouble came from Maharashtra where Congress Chief Minister Prithviraj Chauhan set tongues wagging when he indicated that the Congress was not averse to the idea of supporting a Third Front to keep the BJP out. Talk of a Third Front likely to get close to power has been circulating in recent days.

However, the Congress party itself is divided on the future course. Analysts say this could be partly because the business captains supporting Mr Modi have kept very good contacts with key pro-industry Congress ministers. “The Congress is flummoxed over extending support to the Third Front if it fails to get the numbers to form a government after the Lok Sabha elections,” one local report said.

A news channel said a section of the Congress party is reluctant to support the Third Front and is rather willing to sit in the opposition if the UPA fails to get a third term.

“We are not ruling out anything. Let us see who gets how many seats. We can’t say who we will support or not but the point here is that Congress knows that it will lose the elections,” said communist leader D. Raja.

Earlier in the day, listing out options for the Congress after the Lok Sabha polls, Maharashtra Chief Minster Prithviraj Chavan fuelled fresh speculations about the possibility of Congress’s support for a third front government. “There are many reasons behind Congress doing well in Mumbai. The possibility of Third front and Congress remains open,” he said.