The Hindu : Vajpayee, Advani review election issues

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 20, 2004

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National

Vajpayee, Advani review election issues

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JAN. 19. Election-related issues were discussed by the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, over an hour-long luncheon meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, and the Bharatiya Janata Party president, Venkaiah Naidu, at his residence today.

Issues to figure at the coming BJP Chief Ministers' meeting here on January 21, progress made in the ongoing talks in search of new allies, and other matters related to election preparedness were discussed. The Chief Ministers' meeting — to be attended by the Chief Ministers of Gujarat, Goa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Arunachal Pradesh — has been planned in two sessions. The morning session will be held at Mr. Vajpayee's residence and the afternoon session at Mr. Naidu's residence.

The party will assess the political situation in these seven States, take a close look at the state of the opposition, see which areas of administration needs attention, and generally take stock of the political pluses and minuses.

Since the Prime Minister will not be attending tomorrow's meeting of general secretaries called by Mr. Naidu at his residence, issues that will come up there were reportedly placed before him.

The party is all set to blow the election bugle on January 23 when it will start a countrywide programme of rallies and meetings over two weeks. The programme has been called "Atal Sandesh Abhiyan" (taking the Prime Minister's message to the people). The main aim is to spread the "feel-food factor'' to the districts and the rural areas by detailing the "achievements'' of the Prime Minister during his rule since 1998.

Party leaders are pointing out that if Mr. Vajpayee were to win the 2004 Lok Sabha election, he would be the only Prime Minister to win four elections in a row.

The party is counting the 1996 election also as a "win'' since the BJP emerged as the single largest party and was in Government for 13 days.

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