'I did not fix the release date, it was decided by the publishers' for that was the day the publishing company was formed.

Asked if he was expelled because he had no connections in the BJP's ideological parent the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Singh said: 'I never had any connection with the RSS. It is known I have no relationship or membership of the RSS. I never had during my 42 years in politics.'

He, however, said: 'The grounding that the army gave me is much better than what the RSS professes.' Singh was one of the founding members of the BJP in 1980.

Singh reiterated that he was saddened by the ban on his book in Gujarat.

'I am sad the book has been banned. I join the eminent company of authors like Salman Rushdie. I think banning books in India is shutting the door to thought,' he lamented, and added that politicians like Jawaharlal Nehru and Winston Churchill had written books too.

'If our political leaders stop writing, reading, thinking, discussing and analysing, the politics will get all the more lost in the dark alley than it already is,' he said.