The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has started preparing for mid-term elections.
It has organised a three-day training camp for party MPs from September 26 at Jhinjhauli where it held its first regular training camp for key political functionaries early this month.
In the BJPs estimation, the mid-term poll could be held anytime in the first half of 1998. Former Prime Minsiter Atal Behari Vajpayee, is scheduled to explain the current political situation during his inaugural speech on September 27. This would include his perception of strategies of the different parties and how to counter them.
Of the nine sessions, which include a valedictory speech by party president LK Advani, only one is devoted to improving an MPs performance inside the house. This session is to be presided over by vice-president Bangaru Laxman.
Six sessions are devoted to various aspects of election preparedness, including nursing ones constituency and media management. While general secretary Sushma Swaraj is to preside over the session dealing with electronic media, the session on media management will be presided over by vice-president KL Sharma.
Journalist Dinanath Mishra will make a presentation and will form a panel alongwith Balbir Punj and TVR Shenoy to answer MPs questions on media management.
The BJPs slogan of being a party with a difference was allowed to lie dormant during the Gujarat crisis about a year ago and the chargesheet against Advani and other key leaders in the hawala case. With all these episodes settling down to the BJPs advantage, the party has once again decided to stress this claim.
One session at the camp will be devoted to spreading this message. The party would field its ideologue KN Govinda-charya to speak for an hour on how the BJP is different from other parties. Vice-president Sunder Singh Bhandari would preside over this session.
The key points of this session are the partys emphasis on not being a party engaged in power politics but a decisive participant in the larger movement for national reconstruction and Pandit Deendayal Upadhyayas philosophy on humanism and culture.
Ram Naik, MP, will relate how he nurses his north Mumbai constituency. Presi-dent of the partys youth wing Uma Bharati will be one of the presenters during the session. Naik has never been shy of telling how he has cultivated his constituency through audio-visual aids. The party has finally given him an opportunity to share it with other MPs.
Another session is to focus on making pre-campaign preparations for the elections. Party general secretary Pramod Mahajan will be the presenter at this session and Ashwini Kumar will preside over it. One session is to deal exclusively on maintaining proper co-ordination with party workers and other affiliates of the Sangh Parivar in the constituency. Former BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi is to be the presenter and party general secretary Kushabhau Thakre is to preside.
