BJP meet to decide on fate of LS today

Amidst the talk of early Lok Sabha elections, the BJP national executive began its two-day meeting yesterday. While the timing of elections will be cleared only today when the party working committee takes up the issue, development and the foreign origin issue of Congress president Sonia Gandhi would be the main issues for the elections.

Top leaders including prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, deputy prime minister LK Advani, and finance minister Jaswanth singh, human resource development minister Murali Manohar Joshi, foreign minister Yashwanth Sinha, and seven BJP chief ministers are attending the party meet.

Claiming that the choice before the people in the coming elections is 'Vajpayee versus question mark,' M Venkaiah Naidu, the BJP president, said that the opposition was disunited and leaderless.

Pondering over the issue of foreign origin of the leader of the opposition, Venkaiah said the people of India themselves would certainly make it an issue irrespective of what the BJP was thinking of.

On the develpment front, Venkaiah Naidu in his presidential address asked the party cadres to fucus on the theme of "their 50 years and our 5 years," and to expose the wrong priorities, unsound policies, misgovernance and currupt practices of Congress party, which, according to him, nearly wasted 50 years of nation's time.

"Why did India lag behind in development, in spite of being blessed by an ancient civilisation, fertile land, hard working people, great intellect and vast human resources? Why did India lag behind, when even smaller nations in Asia marched ahead in a spectacular manner?"

Venkaiah questioned while exorting the party men to take on the opposition head on to fullfil the party's 'Mission-2004'. He also set future pririties for the party if voted to power.

A stonger attack on poverty, a faster ending of regional disparities, bridging the urban-rural divide, creation of employment opportunities on a larger-scale, taking up ambitious projects like river-linking beside other issues were touched upon by him in his lengthy speech. He also proposed to set up a committee with party functionaries and well-wishers to prepare a vision document for the next five years.

The BJP president urged the party cadre to reach out to new sections of society, especially minorities who had seen through the self-serving propaganda against the BJP by Congress and other opposition parties.

Expressing confidence that NDA would get two-thirds majority in the elections, he said, "clearly the advantage lies with the BJP and NDA. We succeeded in Operation 2003. Let us now get ready to make Mission-2004 a grand success."

Naidu said that the leadership was BJP's biggest asset as Vajpayee emerged as the tallest Indian leader in modern times, and is widely hailed as the 'great unifier.'

Commenting on the efforts of opposition parties, he criticised them that, "in their inebility to unite under the leadership of the Congress and their refusal to accept its president as a Prime Ministerial candidate, the oppsition parties are toying with the comical idea of forming two platforms to defeat the NDA. They will not succeed."

Congratulaing the finance minister for his "bold set of announcements early this week, giving a boost to economy," Naidu exhorted the party men to convert the feel-good factor in to feel-great factor to attain the full backing of people in the ensuing elections.

"We have a strong track record of performance during past five years. We have established our credibility as a reliable party among our partners and together with them found a cohesive alliance. More and more sections of Indian society in more and more regions of the country are willing to support us," Naidu said.

Saying that people are desirous of bringing back the Vajpayee government, he said the party's endeavour should now be to convert this desire into a firm resolve cutting across barriers of politics, region, religion, caste, class, language and gender.

On India's achievements on the foreign policy front, Naidu said that Vajpayee emerged as statesmen par excellence as the world recognised his achivements.

His latest foreign policy success had been the historic visit to Islamabad, where he provided visionary leadership at the 12th Saarc summit as well as in breaking the ice between India and Pakistan, Naidu added.