New Delhi, Aug 30 - The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is 'imploding', says Jaswant Singh who feels the party he was associated with for 30 years is demonstrating 'lack of confidence' with each passing day and has suddenly been 'robbed of reasoning'. He also said he was 'trapped' into going to Shimla for the leadership meeting that sacked him without explanation.

Maintaining he had no plans to join another political party for the moment, Jaswant Singh said the BJP was collapsing internally following the rapid sequence of events after his exit.

'Yes, it is imploding. Every additional day they display greater and greater lack of confidence. I don't know what has suddenly robbed them of reasoning. It is a very sad demonstration of incapacity,' Jaswant Singh told IANS in an exclusive interview at his sprawling 15, Teen Murti Lane residence.

'Is it a crisis of the party or leadership? The party should have been bursting with political health after expelling me and been in the pink of health. Why is it suffering more? It puts paid to the rationale then.'

Jaswant Singh, 71, who has served as minister of finance, defence and external affairs in prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's governments, said he never expected to be dismissed from the BJP for authoring 'Jinnah: India - Partition - Independence'. The Lok Sabha member from Darjeeling expressed disgust that the BJP threw him out summarily for writing a book that tried to historically evaluate Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah vis-a-vis India's partition.

'Did I apprehend it (expulsion)? No. Did I have any indication? No. I have said in the academy as a gentleman cadet (that) when you are found unsuitable, you are withdrawn. So I reject the word expelled. But that is what they chose to use,' Jaswant Singh, who was an officer in the Indian Army and is an alumnus of the National Defence Academy, said of his expulsion from the party at its leadership meeting (called 'chintan baithak') in Shimla two weeks ago.

'It seemed as if my own party colleagues were almost laying a trap for me,' he told IANS.

''Isn't that humiliating beyond words? That a party which I served for 30 years and was one of its founding members should find it necessary to lay traps? This is dishonourable.