BJP poll office goes hi-tech

Nails are still strewn all over the floor. The sound of hammering interrupts phone conversations. "All this will be finished in the next two or three days," says a BJP manager, pointing to a complex adjoining the party general secretary Pramod Mahajan's residence on Delhi's Safdarjung Road.

"Our war room will soon be ready for action," he says.

80, Lodi Estate, the former residence of Maharashtra chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, taken over by Congress as its election office, is, by contrast, rather laid-back and sleepy. "Yes, (secretary of the economic affairs cell of Congress) Jairam Ramesh comes here in the mornings," said a party worker in the office.

"Now, all we do here is to monitor the television. We will know more by next week," he says. The BJP office at Mahajan's residence is designed as a round-the-clock facility with all the mod cons "" computer terminals that double up as televisions, comfortable chairs, every software programme that could possibly help in capturing electoral trends and huge multicoloured laminated maps that can tell you instantly, the strong and weak points of both the Congress and the BJP.

No expense has been spared to make super fast internet connectivity. For the workers and leaders, there is a provision for a cafe which the party sources say will be ready in the next one week.

Soon after joining the party, new BJP member S Bangarappa held a meeting with the party leaders sitting in chairs laid out in a semicircle under a mango tree.

When it gets too warm, these meetings will be held in a conference room.

Strategy planning sessions are not held in the party headquarters where workers and leaders visit in large numbers hoping to get a nomination or trying to meet some leader.

Plans for the deputy prime minister L K Advani's Bharat Uday Yatra were drawn up at the Safdarjung Road office.