Arun Jaitley

NEW DELHI: Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh has signalled the start of a fresh innings for the party in Uttar Pradesh by giving charge of political affairs in the State to the seniormost general secretary Arun Jaitley when he announced a reshuffle of portfolios at the senior level here on Tuesday.

Soon after the official announcement, Mr. Jaitley said he would visit Lucknow before the end of the first week of June.

"I will go there, meet senior party leaders in the State and assess the situation ... we had a setback in the recent Assembly polls when we were not able to win the number of seats we expected ... but our very large base in the State is intact and we have a strong organisational base ... the electoral trend in U.P. [represented by the Bahujan Samaj Party winning a majority on its own] is not a permanent trend ... at one time we won 221 seats in the Assembly and 58 Lok Sabha seats ... the party has to be very, very active to recapture that political space," Mr. Jaitley said.

There has been talk in the party of revamping the party organisation at the State leadership level. Party organisational elections have been announced, and it seems that by bringing a new leader to U.P., Mr. Singh has admitted that the State needs new political strategies and new ideas.

"Unquestionably the job is very difficult, but the more difficult a job the more challenging it is," Mr. Jaitley said. "I am quite happy to take up the challenge."

Mr. Jaitley replaces Kalyan Singh, the former Chief Minister who was in-charge till he resigned after the 2007 Assembly poll debacle.

It is almost certain that the entire State leadership would be changed. Lalji Tandon has become controversial after his role in the "inadvertent" distribution of the communal compact disc during the Assembly polls and the death of many women in a stampede during the distribution of free `saris' ahead of the 2004 Lok Sabha poll; Kesrinath Tripathi lost his own Assembly seat and resigned as State unit president; and Kalraj Mishra has been given charge as `prabhari' of Bihar signalling that he may be kept away from U.P. politics.

Mr. Jaitley said the first major task would be to get the party ready to face the Lok Sabha poll in 2009, and he thought that "there was enough time" to attempt a turnaround in the party's electoral fortunes in the State that have been going downhill since 1989.

Asked whether he would be given a free hand, Mr. Jaitley said there was nothing like a free hand in a big party. "Moreover, we have a galaxy of senior party leaders from the State — Atalji [Atal Bihari Vajpayee], party president Rajnath Singh, Murli Manohar Joshi — and all decisions are naturally taken after due consultations."

When asked about the string of victories he had brought for the party — in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and Punjab — he said that "credit or blame for victory or defeat in elections goes to the whole party, not to an individual."

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