A. B. Vajpayee

NEW DELHI: The former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, said on Friday that the Bharatiya Janata Party was making a "new beginning."

"The weather has changed ... ice is melting in the mountains ... the sun has changed direction and we have decided to make a new beginning," he said, congratulating Rajnath Singh for his new "challenging" assignment as party president.

Uses metaphors

Speaking at the conclusion of the BJP's one-day National Council session here, he used metaphors to drive home the point that "change (`parivartan')" was the new flavour, and this "change" would be "beneficial to the party."

Even as he complimented Mr. Singh he did not forget to congratulate the outgoing president L.K. Advani for a job well done. "We are all beholden to him for taking the party forward."

Mr. Advani, in his remarks, said that while 2005 had been troublesome for the BJP, it had some significant achievements to its credit. In Jharkhand, where the party had lost all but one Lok Sabha seat in 2004, it managed to win the Assembly elections and in Bihar it was "nothing short of a miracle" that the Rashtriya Janata Dal was ousted from power.

He raised the issue of the "foreign origin" of Congress president Sonia Gandhi once again pointing out that the last split in the Congress happened as a result of this issue. "This is not an academic issue but one that concerns national interest," he emphasised, blaming Mrs. Gandhi for "favouring" and "protecting" Bofors payoffs case accused Ottavio Quattrocchi.

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