Ram Janmabhoomi and Babri Masjid have not even been raised as issues. Kargil was sought to be projected as an emotive issue but it has clearly not worked that way. In fact in parts of eastern U.P the logic of Kargil has been made to stand on its head. "They seek to extract political mileage when it is we, the poor, who have lost our sons on Kargil because the political masters messed it up".

A wave is always a formation of emotive issues and its sheer absence is reflected in the low to moderate turnout in such BJP bastions as Gujarat. A most revealing study has been done by Zee TV. After the political parties had made their pitch, the network asked its viewers to phone-in their agenda and concerns. Over 10,000 viewers focussed on bad roads, absence of schools and health care, electricity, price of cooking oil and vegetables and, above all, water scarcity. Not oneviewer mentioned Ayodhya, Kargil or Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin. We would have to be blind and deaf not to take note of this.

This is the credit Atal Behari Vajpayee can take and build upon even now: that the country's most secular campaign took place when Vajpayee was Prime Minister.

But efforts are already on to smudge this record in U.P. Suddenly the Sangh Parivar has broken its silence on Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura. Why ? Are we being told that opinion polls, exit polls et al should not be taken seriously because the ground reality is not electorally exciting, that a secular campaign is also a tepid campaign. A tepid campaign cannot boost the Hindu movement, as the Parivar sees it. It can only provide credibility for the BJP as an outfit transforming itself into a party of governance.

L.K. Advani understands this as well as Vajpayee does and must somehow seek to harmonise the discordant notes being struck in U.P. The Bible says: he who is prepared to lose shall gain.

We are told repeatedlythat the BJP had, by way of concession to the NDA, placed a moratorium on contentious issues for five years. Then why are these issues being raised in Lucknow? Whom are we to believe? These are not signals either of victorious or of reliable formations.

In some ways senior General Secretary Govindacharya's statement that the BJP has a bifocal vision on Ayodhya, Article 370 and common civil code was credible. What he was trying to say was this: exigencies of power have caused us to put aside contentious issues in the short term but our long-term mission would be incomplete without these issues being incorporated into our agenda.

A cadre-based group which explodes into a movement around Ayodhya and then attempts to settle down as a "party of governance", that too with two dozen disparate groups, must go through such contortions. But it cannot be terribly flattering for Vajpayee that such issues should be raised in the middle of a campaign which so far had been the most secular in years -- in terms of theissues the electorate responded to. Why has it been such a secular election? Because the party which stoked divisive issues when it operated as a massive pressure group from the right is today the party of governance under the leadership of a man who has evolved from agitational politics.

The word secularism, let us face it, was profaned by the Congress. The word became a trick to keep the minority vote bank in its fold. The perception, if not the reality, of this vote bank being so hopelessly enticed by imaginary allurements, caused the Hindu right to build an agitation against the "pampered minority". Fearing defection of its majority support base in the context of Mandal-Mandir conflict, the Congress decided to open the locks of the Ayodhya temple and handed Shah Bano to its minority " vote bank". It fell between stools and became a cipher in U.P. Into the spaces vacated by the Congress entered Vajpayee, increasing his occupation of the middle ground.

That the BJP was in power gave heart to the SanghParivar. Activists like Murli Manohar Joshi could at least implement the Parivar's agenda in the field of education, for instance. Moreover, Prime Ministerial power can be the source of largesse, both tangible and intangible.

But on the debit side was that fear: the BJP, living with the 23-party alliance, would lose its basic purpose, it would become impure. Was it more important to be globally clubable or ideologically pure? Vajpayee had indicated what his preference was but the lamp of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch too was allowed to be lit in the sanctum sanctorum.

RSS chief Rajju Bhaiyya's statement at this juncture that the issue of the three temples was still alive could mean several things. It could imply that, opinion polls notwithstanding, the feedback from the cadres is not encouraging regarding the BJP's prospects. The RSS mentor has been in Allahabad where his prot‚g‚ Murli Monohar Joshi is in some difficulties.

Is he extrapolating from this one experience? Or does the Sangh Parivar see a largerdanger lurking in the shadows? Lok Shakti leader Ramakrishna Hegde has already made a few anti-BJP noises in Karnataka. Have the socialists in the NDA been characteristically indiscreet by informing journalists privately that, with 130 seats, the non-BJP element in the NDA would call the shots? Is the new Lucknow line designed to boost the BJP's numbers at all costs to be able to manage the post-election coalition? If the RSS leader has been misquoted by the news agency let there be a swift clarification.