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By Vinay Kumar
Mr. Advani said the Government had been "informally sounding'' the Election Commission on the present thinking. "This is a process which has to be decided upon. There is loud thinking in the Government. But there is no formal interaction on the subject either in the party or the Government,'' he told reporters. He said ``synchronisation'' between the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls could be achieved by rescheduling the elections. According to Mr. Advani, the ruling party suffers from a "serious handicap'' if it is "always in the election mode". Citing the experience of the past five years of the BJP rule, he said it had made "us conscious of the fact that the continuing election mode, in which the ruling party is, has become a serious handicap to good governance of the country''. He said several decisions of the Government — mainly economic and the budget — were often influenced by considerations of how the voter would react. Mr. Advani's observation assumes significance as the BJP prepares to go to the polls in the four crucial States in October — Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. These have been dubbed a sort of "mini general elections".
`To cut expenditure'
If Mr. Advani's "loud thinking'' is any indication, the BJP could opt for early polls, most probably in the first quarter of the next year. He indicated that "informal discussions'' have been held with one of the major allies of the National Democratic Alliance on the possibility of holding simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. Elections to two other crucial Assemblies — Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh — are scheduled to be held in 2004.
He said that in the post-1971 period, Lok Sabha and Assembly polls had been delinked gradually and the country was now witnessing elections every alternate year. There had been mid-term polls in 1998 and 1999 for the Lok Sabha. On the fixed tenure for the Assemblies, he said it was not possible constitutionally. "Broadly, even in the midst of multiplicity of political parties, if the BJP and the Congress agree on a certain agenda, it can be implemented,'' he hinted.
Mr. Advani said certain important legislation relating to poll reforms would be introduced in the current session of Parliament. These included proxy voting by members of the armed forces and open voting for the Rajya Sabha.
'He is poetic, I am prosaic'
If Atal Behari Vajpayee is poetic, L.K. Advani is prosaic.
"I am prosaic. I am essentially a journalist. I am used to writing prose," Mr. Advani said in an interaction with the students of the Symbiosis International Education Campus here when asked to share his attributes vis-a-vis the Prime Minister's poetic abilities.
Mr. Advani went on to praise Mr. Vajpayee as one of the best orators in Hindi. After the 1957 Lok Sabha elections, Prakashvir Shastri and Vajpayee were the best Hindi orators in Parliament he used to hear as a journalist, he said. — PTI
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