Shortly after the BJP had routed the Congress in the MCD polls, top leaders of the party gathered at L K Advani’s house today and in another show of aggression decided that party president Rajnath Singh would surrender to the police in Lucknow on Monday in connection with the release of the controversial CD. Apart from Advani, the party chief would be accompanied by a galaxy of senior BJP leaders like Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Venkaiah Naidu, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Ravi Shankar Prasad.

The message that came out from the two-hour meeting was that there was nothing for the BJP to be defensive about and Rajnath Singh would not apply for bail in the CD case. Advani himself took the call at the meeting by charting out the way ahead. Recent victories in Uttarakhand and Punjab and now in local polls in the Capital have given the party added political muscle. Advani’s intervention and taking charge of the Uttar Pradesh situation is also believed to be a deliberate effort to stave off the RSS from dictating the course of the party’s election campaign, which has upset a section of the leadership now involved in poll strategy.

While victory for the BJP was expected, its sweeping nature indicated the party’s continuing honeymoon with the urban centres, clearly illustrated in Punjab where the party won 19 of the 23 seats it contested. Moving on the assumption that victories in urban centres actually set the base for victories in semi-urban and rural zones, the party has been doing the homework to build urban voter base.

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