'From now on, I will be totally independent. I will work with like-minded members of other parties...,' Kulkarni told a news channel.

He, however, clarified he would not join any political party.

Kulkarni wrote a strongly-worded article in the Indian Express Saturday, criticising the party for sacking former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh for his book that praises Pakistan founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah, and blames India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel for the country's partition.

Earlier, after the BJP's poll debacle, in an article in Tehelka magazine he found faults with the party and the RSS. The party's tally of seats in the Lok Sabha came down to 116 from 138 in the 2004 elections.

Writing in the Tehelka magazine, he urged the party to introspect on its humiliating defeat and said: 'The RSS needs it no less. Its leaders must ask themselves, and answer the question honestly and earnestly: Why is the acceptability of the RSS and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad limited in Hindu society itself?'

He said the party 'did nothing' while its allies started moving away because of the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat that left over 1,100 people, mostly Muslims, dead.