“We have changed nearly half the candidates for the Uttarakhand polls for the constituencies where we have finalised the candidates. This is in keeping with party president Rajnath Singh’s stated purpose for bringing in candidates with a good and winnable image,” said Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, party vice-president and head of the BJP’s central election and coordination committee on Friday following a meeting of the committee that declared party candidates for 51 of the 70 seats to the Uttarakhand Assembly. The committee changed 23 candidates from the 51 it fielded last time, and kept the case of one sitting MLA pending.

Sources said the changes were also based on poll surveys conducted at the instance of Rajnath Singh, which apparently suggested that the focus should be on young, resourceful candidates who stood for principles. The party is laying a premium on good image. The intention to forge ahead with drastic changes to ensure the party put up a better showing in the state, where it is now in opposition, meant even some candidates who had lost by a whisker in the last polls were not considered for the party ticket this time.

But the meeting failed to finalise the candidates for the remaining 19 seats, and there will be another meeting on the issue early next week. Party sources said the central election committee could not finalise the list of candidates for the remaining seats—among them Haldwani, Nainital, Ramnagar, Jaspur, Lansdowne, Paudhi and Rishikesh—because the committee “did not have adequate information” on the candidates whose names had been proposed as there was no agreement about them. Friday’s highpowered meeting of the election committee was attended by party president Rajnath Singh, party seniors Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, and other senior leaders. Among them were Uttarakhand leaders B.C. Khanduri and Bhagat Singh Koshiyari.

“We want to make sure we have the right candidates in Uttarakhand where we are contesting the polls alone. We wanted to give the right message that we are willing to make drastic changes because we want to have the right image,” Naqvi said.

The BJP is moving on the assumption that the anti-incumbency factor and an aggressive campaign will see it through. It is also in keeping with the message from Vajpayee and Advani, during their ‘margdarshan’ speeches at the BJP national council meeting in Lucknow, that it was necessary for the party to pick candidates with a clean image to win the coming polls.