JULY 5- The BJP central parliamentary board meeting on Thursday was convened with twin objectives in mind.
At one level, it was intended to convey that the party stood united, and that the differences over their prime ministerial face had been buried for now.
At another, it was supposed to send out a message that the party machinery is being overhauled to get it battle-ready.
The meeting, which was followed by another involving the party’s general secretaries and a few other leaders, managed to fulfil both objectives. At the meeting held at the BJP’s national headquarters in Delhi, L.K. Advani and Narendra Modi, whose appointment as the BJP’s campaign committee chief prompted the former to resign from three party posts in June, sat next to each other. Their body language suggested that they were at ease, even though the former’s interventions were few and far between.
The issues discussed at the twin meetings included the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, the Uttarakhand tragedy, and blueprint for the next round of assembly polls and the 2014 general election. While the 12-member parliamentary board sat for an hour, the expanded group sat for another two hours.
The parliamentary board had a long discussion on the CBI chargesheet in the fake encounter case. The government, it was alleged, was pitting the CBI against the Intelligence Bureau. The fact that the affidavit terming Ishrat a Lashkare-Tayyeba operative was overturned also found mention.
One enemy
There were gaping holes in the chargesheet, which the BJP would take to the people, it was said.
“The CBI is being misused by the Congress-led government at the Centre. It is being used as a political tool,” BJP general secretary Ananth Kumar said after the meeting.
As former BJP president M. Venkaiah Naidu pointed out that there are only 210 days left for the election process to get underway, the party vowed to launch an aggressive campaign.
Modi is said to favour a blend of traditional and new-age (social media) campaign methods to reach out to the people.
With the general election drawing near, the BJP has decided to hold booth-level workers’ conferences in all Lok Sabha by August. The conferences will also be held in assembly constituencies in states due to go to polls by August. Then will come a mass-mobilisation campaign that will see the party hold rallies and roadshows across India.
Also on the table are public meetings that will have all top leaders in attendance, to convey a message of unity. Among the main campaign themes, corruption, price-rise and misgovernance will top the list. “These will be our main talking points,” said Kumar.
