NEW DELHI, March 3: With more than a year still to go for the general elections, India’s main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party began its 2014 poll campaign here on Sunday but its scathing attack on the corruption-tainted ruling Congress party could not hide its own divisions over who should be the prime ministerial candidate.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi received the loudest cheers at the party’s conclave for his characteristically vitriolic speech. He described Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a night watchman for Congress president Sonia Gandhi. There were senior leaders, including BJP stalwart Lal Kishan Advani, who seemed uncomfortable with Mr Modi’s possible candidature for the top job.

Mr Advani is himself supposed to be a potential candidate for the slot. As a tactical ploy, however, he subtly flaunted another probable candidate as he gave high marks to senior woman leader Sushma Swaraj, comparing her oratorical skills in parliament to former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s ease with words. Unlike Mr Modi, a hardcore member of the Hindu revivalist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, Ms Swaraj came to the BJP from a socialist past.

Mr Modi’s speech was laced with uncharitable invectives against the Nehru-Gandhi family. At one point he said the family didn’t let President Pranab Mukherjee become prime minister because he would have challenged their domination of the Congress party. He said Mr Mukherjee would have been a better prime minister than Dr Singh.

It was not clear why he involved the president’s office in his electoral harangue, but both — Mr Modi and Mr Mukherjee — are considered to be close to the house of Ambanis and the big business have backed the Gujarat chief minister’s pro-markets policies, enough to project him as a future national leader.

In his attack on the Congress, Mr Modi said: “The party is destroying this country like termites. It is very difficult to deal with termites — you finish them in one place and they rise in another. The only medicine for this ailment is the sweat of the BJP worker. Only this sweat can free this nation from the termite that is the Congress. Whether we take the initiative or not, whether we act or not, the country has decided to move on. It has decided to throw the Congress out.”