The Hindu : BJP's U.P. scene may emerge today

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 02, 2004

National

National

BJP's U.P. scene may emerge today

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, FEB. 1. Some clarity is expected to emerge tomorrow in the affairs of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh after the party general secretary, Pramod Mahajan's likely visit to Lucknow tomorrow for another meeting with the former Chief Minister, Kalyan Singh, and the BJP president, Venkaiah Naidu, chairs the party's core committee meeting on the State here tomorrow.

The party spokesperson, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, said senior central and State leaders have been invited for the meeting at Mr. Naidu's residence. Later in the day, he would chair another meeting of the party's office-bearers in the State and district chairpersons to undertake a district-wise review.

The party would have a constituency-wise review to note the pitfalls and the plus points and arrive at a proper assessment of its potential, now that it is certain that the party would contest the elections in the State without any alliances, except for the likely "homecoming" of Mr. Kalyan Singh.

The exercise is crucial for the party as the State has 80 Lok Sabha seats. In 1998 and 1996, the party won more than 50 seats but the number came down by almost 20 seats in 1999.

Mr. Naqvi said Mr. Naidu had set up several election-related committees, apart from the election campaign committee and the `vision' document committee set up on Saturday. A committee in-charge of resource mobilisation had been set up under Ved Prakash Goyal. The `media' team had been enlarged to include the Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, and the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, besides the general secretaries, Pramod Mahajan and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, and the additional spokesperson, Prakash Javadekar.

Mr. Mahajan, the chief spokesperson and election in-charge and head of the campaign committee, will also head the publicity committee. Mr. Jaitley, Mr. Naqvi, Mr. Javadekar, the Information and Broadcasting Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Members of Parliament, Balbir Punj and Dinanath Mishra, and the former Organiser Editor, Seshadiri Chari, would be part of this committee.

Mr. Naqvi will head the committee that will draw up the campaign tours of leaders. He will be assisted by Piyush Goyal, Sanjay Bhalla and Arun Singh.

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