Lending finishing touches to the fortnight-long exercise undertaken to quell dissidence among its legislators in Karnataka, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday described the rebellion against Chief Minister B. S. Yeddyurappa as unfortunate.

The party maintained that the breach had been bridged with the meetings of the recently formed coordination committee and the BJP legislature party.

But factionalism reportedly raised its head during the fag end of the exercise.

Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, known to have mentored ministers G. Janardhan Reddy and G. Karunakara Reddy, who led the vicious campaign against Yeddyurappa, said, “We’ve learnt many lessons from the crisis. The main lesson is that more communication was required. The chief minister should hold more dialogue with party leaders.”

The veiled attack on Yeddyurappa came at a time when BJP was about to move on from the controversy.

The party faced a split with legislators demanding the chief minister’s removal and later settling for a compromise formula thrashed out by the central leadership.

Swaraj said the crisis in the first south Indian state to be ruled by the saffron party was unfortunate and that “it had put all of us to shame.”

Swaraj said ending the deadlock did not require a miracle — it just took 15 days. “We will compensate for the loss of work (state government’s) during the period by putting in extra efforts,” she said.

Even as BJP leaders Arun Jaitley and Anant Kumar remained tight-lipped over the rebellion, Venkaiah Naidu said the episode had damaged the party.

As decided in the peace formula, Yeddyurappa had dropped state Rural Development minister Shobha Karandlage, transferred his principal secretary and posted officials desired by Reddy brothers in some districts and ministries.