NEW DELHI: .

At Sunday's Jaipur rally, the Prime Minister referred to general elections being held after "a year-and-a half". Later, the BJP "postponed" a scheduled meeting of party MPs in Jaipur on August 23/24, which was to be attended by the PM and deputy PM LK Advani, to consider the dates of the next general elections.

BJP office-bearers, who met at party president Venkaiah Naidu's residence on Monday, taking their cue from the PM, ruled out a November LS poll.

The idea of synchronising the assembly elections scheduled for November in MP, Rajasthan, Delhi, Chhatisgarh and Mizoram with an early general election, party sources said, came from Rajya Sabha chairperson B S Shekhawat, partly because he felt this would help the outcome in Rajasthan.

This was then publicly articulated by Advani, who said synchronising general and assembly elections would save money and "facilitate development".

The BJP, fearing poor results in the assembly elections, which could adversely affect the general elections, felt it would be more prudent to hold them together.

The thinking was that as the next LS poll is being built up as a Vajpayee versus Sonia encounter, it could help the BJP vis-a-vis the Congress in the four major states if the elections were clubbed together.