New Delhi

April 22, 2004

BJP'S FULL CONCENTRATION IN UTTAR PRADESH

As a part of the new strategy worked out at a high-level
meeting at the Prime Minister's House on Wednesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party plans more than a 1000 rallies and public meetings in Delhi and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee quickly applied correctives to his off-hand remarks on his successor and coalition headache causing damage to
the party's prospects.

The party has also sought help of the RSS leadership to fully involve the Sangh Parivar in bettering the prospects of the party candidates while the party's management specialists are being brought to Uttar Pradesh from the states where the polls are over. In 1999 elections, the BJP had won the
highest 29 seats, followed by 26 by Samajwadi Party, 14 by the Bahujan Samaj Party and 10 by Congress. The target set by the party is to win at least 40 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats from the state.

So far the BJP's campaign in Uttar Pradesh, as in other states, was focused against the Congress but the new strategy envisages an aggressive attack on the Mulayam Singh Government in the state with a chargesheet quickly framed against it to blame it for the backwardness of Uttar
Pradesh. Copies of the chargesheet have been rushed to the party's poll managers in all the constituencies to focus on it to show how the vote to the BJP to stay in power in the Centre can promise a share in development to the people of Uttar Pradesh. BJP General Secretary Pramod Mahajan, who
is overall incharge of the state's poll management strategies, however, finds the issue of development not strong enough to sway the voters and hence he is busy, with the help of his aides including some from Maharashtra, to fix the caste equations for helping the party.

Though the BJP leaders are busy trying to clarify the wrong notes struck by the Prime Minister in the last few days, the party's strategy managers persuaded him to clarify himself as it would have better impact and he lost no time in clarifying in an interview on AIR that he was not quitting midway during the next five years of his tenure as the PM, stressing that
he is nobody to hand over the baton. He also pointed out that he would be forming yet another coalition government of NDA since there are no signs of the BJP getting enough seats to have the majority on its own.

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BJP's DRIVE TO WOO MUSLIMS

The BJP leaders are making repeated appeals to the Muslims to give their party a chance to prove itself and the man who has helped them in a big way is none else but former Union Law Minister Ram Jethmalani contesting against Atal Bihari Vajpayee from Lucknow. Senior Congress leader Ammar
Rizvi, who has been the acting chief minister twice, felt revolting at the Congress backing Jethmalani who had stood by the assassins of late Indira Gandhi and as such he walked into the Prime Minister's House on Wednesday to promise to campaign for him in Lucknow. The Congress which had decided to back Jethmalani since it had no strong candidate to fight against Vajpayee is quite embarrassed as it had not thought of losing a senior leader like Rizvi in the bargain. Rizvi has been one of the few Congress leaders who were not unnerved by the Congress downfall in Uttar Pradesh as he was always on the forefront of the efforts made to revive the party's popularity in the state and hence his loss may mean an adverse impact on the Congress prospects in the state. Efforts are being made to persuade Rizvi to explain to him the Congress compulsions in backing Jethmalani but it appears too late for Rizvi who points out that he had shot off a score of letters to Sonia Gandhi and her political secretary Ahmed Patel warning that support to Jethmalani will be a blot on the history of Congress. He has pointed out that Jethmalani not only became the lawyer of Indira Gandhi's killers when nobody was ready to defend them but he even tried to drag the family members by making mischievous submissions before the Thakkar Commission. He bemoans as to how the Congress can forget the daily questions asked by Jethmalani to Rajiv Gandhi in the Bofors case

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THE EC'S BUREAUCRATS AS CENSORS

Once the bureaucrats get the powers of censorship, they go to any ridiculous extent. Punjab's Chief Electoral Officer G S Cheema, who is an IAS officer, has shown this by applying censor scissors on the compact discs (CDs) submitted by the Akali Dal for clearance to use them in the election campaign by way of public viewing and TV advertisements. The CDs
stuff most of the text of the advertisements that the Akali Dal has been putting out in the newspapers and Cheema found no fault with these advertisements till this date. He, however, found the same matter on the visual media as offensive and ordered them to be deleted. He objected not
only to the reference of anti-Sikh riots in 1984 but also found fault with the party calling Chief Minister Amarinder Singh as "Raja" in view of his princely background. The CEO also ordered removal of personal allegations levelled against the CM and did not allow even the references to the allegations levelled against the CM by his own senior minister Mrs
Rajinder Kaur Bhattal. The Akali Dal has been running the newspaper campaign with the punch line "Capt Sahib hun tan jawab deo, Bibi Bhattal nu hisab deo (Capt Sahib, give reply to Bhattal and give her explanation)." But the same lines on the CD were ordered to be removed.

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BJP - TALKING WITH A FORKED TONGUR ON COW SLAUGHTER BAN

In its vision document, the BJP has vowed to bring a national ban on cow slaughter but when its leader Sushma Swaraj travels to the North East to campaign, she knows that the tribals there relish beef and hence she changes the tune to claim that there was no question at all that the next BJP-led government at the Centre will ban the cow slaughter. Her logic and that is true also is that enactment of the law falls in the domain of the state assemblies under the Constitution and as such the Centre cannot do anything about it. But then why put it on its national agenda? Obviously,
only to satisfy the Sangh Parivar die-hards who treat cow as "gau mata." Beef has been the most popular red meat consumed by tribals in the Christian-dominated hillstates of Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram and no government of any party can dare to impose ban on the cow slaughter.

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WHO IS THE RICHEST OF THEM ALL !

Nyimthungo Lotha, an independent candidate contesting for the Nagaland Lok Sabha seat, has claimed to be the richest candidate in this election by filing an affidavit of owning the assets worth over Rs 9,000 crores. Lotha, who worked in the Hyderabad-based ICAR, claims that 15-sq km estate
he owns near Humatso village in Wokha district is worth Rs 9,000 besides a house at Humtso worth Rs 4 crores and agricultural land of five acres worth Rs 5 crores. He even claimed that the Wokha deputy commissioner had
assessed the market value of his estate, though the officer denied any assessment of the land carried out by the district administration. The claim may be patently false but the election authorities can do little in the election except to take the candidate to court for filing the false affidavit. If Lotha's claim turns out to be false, a question mark has also been put on the claim of Srikantadutta Narasimharaja Wodiyar, the
erstwhile Maharaja of Mysore, that his property is worth Rs 1500 crores as most of the assets shown by him in the affidavit are disputed properties and he is still fighting court battle to establish his ownership.

In Delhi, the richest candidate so far is criminal lawyer-turned Rajya Sabha member R K Anand contesting for the South Delhi seat on the Congress ticket against BJP's sitting MP Vijay Kumar Malhotra. He has filed the affidavit of the assets worth Rs 7.7 crores while very close behind him with the claim of Rs 7.5 crores is Shiv Khera, author of the famous book "You can win", who has entered the fray from South Delhi as an independent candidate vowing to fight against corruption and work for safety of women in Delhi. Union Minister Jagmohan has assets worth Rs 1.4 crores while
another minister Sahib Singh Verma's worth is just Rs 36 lakhs.

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BJP PROTESTS AT MULAYAM'S PARTY SEEKING VOTES IN THE NAME OF ALLAH

The Bhartiya Janata Party on Thursday petitioned the Election
Commission for taking stringent action against the samajwadi Party for issuing advertisements in leading Urdu newspapers of Uttar Pradesh seeking the Muslim votes in the name of Allah (upon whom be peace).

The advertisement says: "Jinhone Allah ka ghar toda, Allah unka gurur todega aur Mulayam Singh jinhone Allah ka ghar bachaya hai, Allah unka ikbal bulund karega. (Those who demolished abode of Allah (reference to Babri Masjid), Allah will destroy their pride. Mulayam Singh who has saved
the Allah's abode will get the blessings of the Allah.)

BJP General Secretary and spokesman Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who was part of the BJP delegation that met the Chief Election Commissioner and the two Election Commissioners, said he had seen people revoking "Allah ke naam par" (in the name of the Allah) to seek many things but for the first time ever a party is seeking votes in the name of the Allah.

The petition submitted to the Election Commission said such appeal was "highly objectionable" and should be viewed under the violation of the model code of conduct for stringent action.

The delegation also urged the Election Commission for effective deployment of the para-military forces on the polling days in the sensitive constituencies of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana as the BJP feared rigging by the ruling parties of these states.

A complaint was also lodged with the Election Commission about the government officers in some districts of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh openly involving themselves in the election campaign of the ruling parties. Naqvi, however, declined to disclose names of the districts when asked at the Press briefing later at the party headquarters.

Naqvi said the delegation also submitted the reply to the Election Commission's show-cause notice on the April 12 stampede in Lucknow during a saree distribution function to mark the birthday of senior BJP leader Lalji Tandon. The reply denied involvement of the BJP's national, state or district unit officially or unofficially in the function.

While stating that the party had also replied to other queries in the Election Commission's notice, Naqvi declined to spell out the queries or the answers given. The code of conduct applies only on the political parties and not on organisations, he said, and added that no code can stop celebration of the birthday, marriage or other functions.