BJP's Mumbai meet to focus on future strategy

As the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national executive gets ready to meet in Mumbai for the first time since it lost the general elections, there is a growing feeling that the meeting will more or less point to the way the party will shape up in the coming years.

There is a realisation within the party that one era of the party's history is over, while the next is yet to be given shape.

In his first press conference after the elections debacle, LK Advani had said the 2004 results were comparable to the drubbing the party got in the 1985 elections when it got only two seats in the Lok Sabha.

The reason, he said was that the 1985 result were the result of a wave while this was a mandate against the NDA government.

The 1985 drubbing made the party take a more militant Hindu stance vis a vis the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, this strategy remained a formula of success for the party till 2004.

The debate in the party is whether abandoning Hindutva for India Shining led to the party's loss, or the fact that the Gujarat riots overshadowed India Shining as a more enduring memory is still raging.

The BJP is in alliance with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra where assembly elections are due in September. Already Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thakeray has indicated that his party will be taking a far right stance, and the BJP too appears to be falling in line, at least in the state. Whether this is going to be repeated in every state is yet to be seen.

According to party general secretary Pramod Mahajan, the biggest lesson for the party in these election has been the fact that every constituency voted on local issues and not national ones (with the possible exception of the Muslim who voted on en masse against the BJP).

In this situation the party has taken a safer route of a state by state analysis of elections, to arrive at the formula of success. "Every state will be discussed in the National Executive," said Mahajan. The churning at the national executive will result in a political resolution being passed titled "Agrim Disha" or the "Future direction".

"Everybody is unhappy with the Lok Sabha polls outcome. But no scapegoats are being searched. We have won and lost elections under the same leadership in the past.With every loss you cannot effect change, it is not a bureaucracy," he said.

With the recent spat between former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the Sangh Parivar over Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, this future direction will also point to the direction which the leadership race within the party is taking.