“Sushmaji, we are with you.” Early on June 14, Rajnath Singh was the first to call external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj with this assurance after news broke that she had granted a “favour” to the controversial Lalit Modi. Within a couple of hours, Singh was the first to speak out in her defence. Two days later, Singh pulled a coup of sorts by bringing Swaraj and finance minister Arun Jaitley to the same table in his office for an hour-long chat before Jaitley broke his silence to defend Swaraj in a press conference with Singh. The euphemism of “aasteen ka saanp”, coined by BJP leader Kirti Azad to describe the episode as an inside job, did embarrassingly crop up as a question posed to Jaitley, who brushed it aside abruptly, but Singh’s purpose of showing a united face of the government had been served.