The former union minister, who has earned the ire of party leaders for his book 'Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence', arrived Tuesday but remained closeted in his room at the five-star Hotel Cecil, just a few hundred metres from the venue of the BJP meeting.

While all party leaders, including L.K. Advani, Rajnath Singh and Sushma Swaraj, were at the state guest house Peterhoff, Jaswant Singh cocooned himself in his hotel and did not meet any of the leaders.

He also did not attend a dinner Tuesday evening hosted by leader of the opposition L.K. Advani for BJP leaders, including chief ministers of various BJP-ruled states.

Eulogising Jinnah in his book, Jaswant Singh has said Jinnah was 'demonised' by India, while it was actually India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru whose belief in a centralised polity had led to the partition of the subcontinent.

Jaswant Singh has also strongly contested the popular Indian view that Jinnah was the villain of the 1947 partition or the man principally responsible for it.

'I think we have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon... We needed a demon because in the 20th century the most telling event in the subcontinent was the partition of the country,' he has said.