Shourie's second term as Rajya Sabha member is concluding early next year and going by our norm he may not get a third renomination,' a BJP strategist told IANS, pleading anonymity, lest he kick off 'an unnecessary controversy.'

Sinha went on in the TV interview: 'I thought there would be a lot of activity and introspection... somebody would ask me why we lost, where we lost. I found that nothing of that kind happened and that kind of disappointed me.'

He added: 'I waited until we were called to a meeting of the newly elected parliamentarians May 31, and that again was somewhat casual, in a light hearted manner and we tried to (explain) away our defeat... It was not serious.'

Sinha also differed with the explanation given by senior leaders L.K. Advani and Arun Jaitley that the election results indicated the 'emergence of a bipolar polity in the country' where the Congress scored over the BJP but this should give hope to the latter.

Singh reiterated this in Lucknow: 'If we consider the party's election results on an all India basis, we find there is no need to get dejected. We have emerged as the (largest) opposition party and hence must utilise this opportunity in winning the faith of the masses.'

But Sinha said in his interview: 'These are consolations we can give to ourselves.'

The former finance minister expressed regret that despite having presented five budgets in the past, his party did not ask him to discuss this year's union budget.

'I expected the party to ask me to speak on the budget... I was informed that somebody else was going to speak on this... and that clearly disappointed me,' he said.