BJP Future - 5

[acharya]

BJP signals it is ready for polls

Neena Vyas

We’ve put 2004 poll defeat behind us: Advani

BHOPAL: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s message from Bhopal was loud and clear: it is ready to face the electoral challenges ahead with the help of a strengthened and expanded National Democratic Alliance to once again emerge as a claimant to power at the Centre.

Addressing a press conference here, BJP president Rajnath Singh expressed the hope that very soon some parties would enter into a formal alliance with the BJP.

This message was also reflected in the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, L.K. Advani, at the concluding session of the party conclave. “I can say without hesitation that it is in Bhopal that our party has left the after-effects of the 2004 elections fully and firmly behind. The BJP is no longer in the despondent mood that set in after the 2004 Lok Sabha defeat.” Mr. Singh said a large number of BJP leaders were ‘swayamsevaks’ and that he had asked the RSS for full-time volunteers to work as organisation secretaries at various levels in the BJP. Yet, the BJP had always taken its own decisions and would continue to do so. He was responding to a question on the BJP’s ties with the RSS.

Both Mr. Singh and Mr. Advani identified the Left parties, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Congress itself as destabilising forces in the polity — the DMK for its remarks on Ramar Sethu, and the Left and the Congress for the open verbal duel on the nuclear deal. Mr. Advani charged the Congress with deserting its coalition dharma by sticking to the nuclear deal in spite of stiff opposition by the Left.

Mr. Advani said it was false propaganda by the Congress that the BJP was opposed to energy security for India. His charge was that it was the Congress which had ignored strategic security through the nuclear deal. Mr. Singh announced a number of party programmes aimed at strengthening the party for a possible mid-term election: among other things, constituency-level party workers’ meetings, BJP committees at booth-level covering the entire country by this year-end, and a national council session of the party in December to give effect to women’s reservation in party committees.

The party president identified the issues to be highlighted: the stability crisis, misgovernance by the UPA, mishandling of terrorism and internal security issues, appeasement of minorities and ‘pseudo-secularism.’