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Development will be poll plank: Advani

By Our Special Correspondent

JAIPUR May 25. The BJP leadership today made it clear that the party would prefer to fight the coming elections to five States and the Lok Sabha elections later on the issue of development. Hindutva could be debated at the national level but for the elections the planks would be development, the performance of the Vajpayee Government and the non-performance of the Congress Governments.

It was the main Opposition, the Congress which had always brought in the topic of "Hindutva" at the time of the elections to cover up its own failures in governing the country for 50 years in the past, the BJP leaders noted at the one-day meeting of the national office bearers here.

The meeting, attended by the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, the party president, M. Venkaiah Naidu, the general secretary, Pramod Mahajan, and other senior leaders, gave the impression that the leadership was convinced about the bright prospects of the party in four States scheduled to go to the polls this November. In the fifth State, Mizoram, the party would be in a position to mark its entry for the first time."We would fight the next elections on the twin planks of `suraksha and vikas' (security and development)", Mr. Advani said. The people could compare five years of the Vajpayee Government and 50 years of the Congress, he pointed out and mentioned, in this context, Pakistan, the three wars fought with it and the operations of the ISI in the country. After the National Democratic Alliance Government came to power the ISI's activities began to decline, he claimed.

Predicting that the BJP would come to power in 2004 with Atal Behari Vajpayee as the Prime Minister, he said the party's dream was to make India a developed nation by 2020.

Mr. Naidu said the workers should strive to help the party achieve the target of 300 seats in the coming Lok Sabha elections. The NDA partners together would make two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha, he asserted and said the BJP considered the coming Assembly elections crucial as their outcome would influence the next Lok Sabha elections.

The party rated its chances high in the four States because of the "high level of resentment among the voters against the ruling Congress". The BJP would also score from the good performance of the Vajpayee Government at the Centre. "Our five years experience in power at the Centre has given us lot of confidence," Mr. Advani told a delegates' meeting later in the evening. "We too had our own apprehensions when we took over. We were asked whether such a large political grouping as the NDA would work when even single parties had failed to retain power after taking over." The party was always willing to join a debate on the issue of Hindutva at the national level, Mr. Advani said. The framers of the Constitution were clear at the time of Independence that India would not be a theocratic State while Pakistan opted to be one.

BJP to go it alone: Page 11

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