National

BJP’s battle cry: prepare for 2009 Lok Sabha elections

Neena Vyas

The party’s executive committee meeting will begin today

NEW DELHI:

NEW DELHI: Every Assembly election battle from now on will directly affect the outcome of the 2009 Lok Sabha war, and every battle will have to be fought and won to win the final war.

That is the strategy on which the Bharatiya Janata Party’s two-day national executive committee will work to make possible its latest slogan, Har Booth Par Bhajpa – the BJP on every polling booth.

But for this to happen the party leadership is acutely aware that it needs to put its house in order: discipline is not what it should be; the cadre-based party has all but disappeared turning the BJP into a mass-based organisation, and with that change have come many ills; the party needs to refurbish its image that took a beating when its MP Babubhai Patel was caught in the human trafficking case; and finally, most importantly, the BJP needs to expand the National Democratic Alliance by wooing and inducting new allies.

At a two-and-a-half hour meeting of the BJP office-bearers here this Sunday, the strategy was thrashed out, and it was decided that the coming monsoon months till September should be used to fine tune the organisational set-up, ensure discipline and unity is maintained in the party’s State units, and try to inculcate the spirit that was there in the party when it was cadre-based, party spokesperson Prakash Javadekar indicated.

The executive committee meeting will start with party president Rajnath Singh’s address on Monday. He gave a hint of the tough talking Mr. Singh may do on the issue of discipline as the latter said on Sunday after the office-bearers’ meeting: “No one who comes out publicly against the party line or against the State leadership will be spared.”

He was responding to a question from reporters on the recent statements from MLAs in Gujarat and Rajasthan against their Chief Ministers. Mr. Javadekar said the same thing when he emphasised “zero tolerance” for indiscipline.

The party has planned to adopt three resolutions – a political resolution, one on the agrarian crisis and another on the party’s opposition to the current proposed alignment of the Sethusamudram project.

The recent developments related to the Presidential poll are expected to come up at the meeting in one form or another, Mr. Singh said. What he did not say was what other party leaders hinted at: the BJP could give a call for a “conscience vote” in that poll. But, it is not clear whether that will be part of the political resolution or will come in the speech of one of the top leaders.

Some party leaders fear that such a call could prove to be a double-edged sword for it would also mean that NDA allies – some of them are not happy supporting Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat for the top job – would also not feel bound to vote on the line formally decided by the NDA.

The most important task for the party is to project itself as “progressive,” said a party functionary, to help attract newer allies to the NDA. A new idea introduced at this executive is “presentations” by experts in various fields. The debate on the agrarian crisis, for example, is to be preceded by a presentation by M.S. Swaminathan, chairman of the National Commission on Farmers.

The discussion on the Sethusamudram project will be preceded by a presentation from Kalyani Raman, who the BJP claims is an expert on this subject.

These two resolutions are expected to be taken up on Monday while the political resolution will come up on Tuesday. That would naturally target the Congress party, its allies and supporting parties by raking up every issue from prices and farmers’ suicides to the failed extradition of Ottavio Quattrocchi, accused in the Bofors case.

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