PM scales down UP rally plan

MANDATE 2004/Cong, Left team meets CEC, blames BJP for code violation

put it), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has scaled down the pomp and show usually associated with the nomination-filing ceremony of the Prime Minister.

It said the public rally had been cancelled and there would be no bands, processions and fireworks accompanying the nomination-filing. A havan at the party office is the only public ceremony that will mark the filing of nomination by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee slated for April 15. On that day relatives will also perform the fourth day ceremony of the dead.

At the daily briefing, general secretary Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the party regretted the loss of lives, but added the BJP had nothing to do with the distribution of sarees as part of Lalji Tandon's birthday celebrations.

It was done by a charity body as their way of celebrating Tondon's birthday. Naqvi criticised the Congress for trying to politicise the issue.

A delegation of the Congress and the Left parties today met Chief Election Commissioner TS Krishna Murthy and told him that the function was a contravention of the model code of conduct and must be noted.

Naqvi pointed out that neither Mulayam Singh Yadav nor Mayawati, two principal political protagonists in UP, accompanied the Congress in its visit to the CEC.

"These two parties have to be complimented for not trying to derive political mileage from what is essentially a human tragedy," Naqvi said. This stand of the BJP could be a pointer to a post-poll scenario of a hung Parliament where the BJP will need all the allies it can get to form a government.

Tandon has been the Prime Minister's campaign manager in Lucknow but was better known as his food and beverage manager because in his salad days, he used to arrange for Vajpayee, a vast array of biryanis and kababs that Vajpayee was partial to. Whether Vajpayee will replace him, an associate for many years, as his campaign manager after this incident remains to be seen.

Former UP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh and Tandon could never rub on well together. In fact, one of the reasons for Singh leaving the BJP was a constant suspicion that Tandon was engaged in undercutting him. So Singh will shed no tears at Tandon's current debacle.

There is no doubt that the incident has harmed the BJP especially with the Congress trying to milk it for every penny. Naqvi tried hard to present a contrast between the BJP's nobility - following Ajit Jogi's accident and the Prime Minister's gesture of cancelling his visit to Mahasamund in deference to Jogi's injuries - and the Congress's perfidious role in the Lucknow tragedy. However, this appeared to cut little ice.