“This is not advancement of a community, this is communalism. Why is it necessary to alienate a section of the country as was being done before Independence. The CPM talks of perverted secularism. These parties are not talking about benefiting Muslims, it is about being anti-Hindu. This will become a key issue in the Uttar Pradesh polls,” Malhotra said. Incidentally, the subject of an aggressive back-to-basics campaign plank has been under discussion in the party for a while and was discussed during the party’s national council and national executive meetings last year.

The strategy for the elections will be finalised in the course of meetings between M. Venkaiah Naidu, who has been put in charge of the party’s election set-up in the state, and other leaders heading the different regional election units that the party has created for the polls.

It is also expected that Kalyan Singh’s name as the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate will be announced ahead of the elections, making a break from the usual practice of leaving the official announcement to a meeting of the newly elected legislature party in case the BJP wins.

The pull towards a Hindu votebase was witnessed recently by the party in the Punjab polls where it performed exceptionally well, winning 19 of the 23 seats it contested. The party believes that urban Hindus, for whom rising prices are a major issue, had rejected the stand that minorities and especially Muslims would have the first right to resources. “The open appeasement did not go down well with the voters,” said a party leader. There was also a conscious effort to draw Hindu voters in areas like Ludhiana and Jullunder, by bringing Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi to campaign there. The Akalis and the BJP won all assembly seats from those areas.

... contd.