It was a close call for the Delhi BJP,which on Tuesday,released its manifesto for the upcoming Delhi Assembly elections. In what would have been a major gaffe,the party nearly distributed manifestoes sans the photographs of its most prominent leaders on the cover. The covers of the manifesto printed initially had photographs of national president Rajnath Singh,Delhi poll in-charge Nitin Gadkari,Delhi unit chief Vijay Goel,leader of opposition V K Malhotra,Delhi CM candidate Dr Harsh Vardhan and PM candidate Narendra Modi. But,missing from the cover were faces of its top brass former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee,former deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani,leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley. And,no one realised what,or rather,who were missing from the manifesto,till 5,000 printed copies were sent to the party headquarters late last night,just prior to distribution. As soon as the goof-up was noticed,the senior leaders were apprised of the situation. No one engaged in a blame-game there was simply no time and orders were given to rectify the error immediately,before the situation went out of control. Fortunately,when the manifestoes were distributed this morning,the covers featured everyone from the top leadership. When contacted,Harsh Vardhan said the error was rectified as soon it was brought to his notice. However,he did try to shift the blame on young members of the party. We believe that the team handling the printing of manifesto has young members. They probably did not think of everyone who should feature on the cover page. The mistake was amended and all have got manifestoes with top brass featured on the cover page, Harsh Vardhan said. Asked about clearance given to the draft manifesto before it went in for printing,Harsh Vardhan told Newsline,This is a non-issue. We have been busy with campaigning and did not get time to pay attention to the manifesto cover page. What matters is that the final product has not missed out on any of the significant leaders associated with the campaigning.
