BJP focus on LS elections

While general secretary Arun Jaitley will coordinate the media cell operations, senior leaders have been asked to make television appearances to capture “more mindspace” and win the “war of ideas”.

The BJP’s crucial “core group on elections”, which met here on Wednesday, decided to announce its second list of Lok Sabha candidates, from Uttar Pradesh, early next month.

“We have invited election committees form Jharkhand, Assam, Orissa and Maharashtra to Delhi on September 4-6 for talks,” said BJP president Rajnath Singh. The party’s central election committee had been meeting state election committees to discuss possible LS candidates, until the process was disrupted by the cash-for-votes scam.

While the party chose to go public with the decisions on the candidate selection process and Advani’s Sankalp Yatra, it kept mum on Jaitley’s responsibility. “He had been coordinating with the party spokespersons anyway; there was no reason, therefore, to make an announcement to that effect,” said a leader. The real reason, however, lay in the intense rivalry in the top echelons of the party.

The Orissa situation also figured in Wednesday’s meeting. “I am sending a fact-finding team under general secretary Vinay Katiyar to Orissa to find out the ground situation there,” said Rajnath.