By IANS,
Bangalore : The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) national executive meets here Friday to discuss a winning strategy for the next Lok Sabha polls as it looks for issues that would find resonance with voters in the face of a triumphal Congress that is seeking to highlight its policy successes over the India-US nuclear deal.
“We will discuss the political, economic and social situation in the country apart from the preparation for the Lok Sabha elections,” state BJP spokesperson and former Lok Sabha member Dhananjaya Kumar told IANS.
“The agenda, however, will be fixed by the central leadership,” he added.
Around 260 delegates will attend the three-day meet at Chancery Pavilion hotel on Residency Road, one of the busiest avenues in the central business district of India’s IT hub.
The Karnataka unit of the BJP has set up 24 committees to ensure that everything goes well, Kumar said.
A media centre is being set up at Woodlands hotel, less than a kilometre from the national executive venue.
This is the fourth time the BJP will be holding its top leadership meeting in Bangalore. But this is the first time it will be held with the party in power in Karnataka.
The executive has a tough task on hand in reformulating the party’s stand on the nuclear deal, now that the Congress appears to be gung-ho over it after the NSG waiver.
The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government deftly used the voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests, announced by then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999, to convince the doubters in the NSG cartel to give up their opposition to the waiver.
When it became apparent that the 45-member nuclear cartel may not agree to the waiver unless India committed itself to not conducting any more nuclear tests, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee issued a statement that the UPA government would adhere to the voluntary moratorium announced by the Vajpayee government.
This helped clinch the deal. Back home, it has also become a weapon for the Congress to question the BJP’s attacks on the nuclear deal.
The BJP’s last executive meeting was held in New Delhi in June when the Left was still supporting the Manmohan Singh government. At that time the executive passed a resolution stating the nuclear deal in its present from was unacceptable and must be renegotiated.
Inflation is finally showing signs of easing though prices of essential commodities remain high. This downward trend may also force the BJP to re-formulate its views on the UPA government’s handling of the economy.
The Amarnath shrine land row too has been resolved, taking away what would have been a potentially highly emotive subject for the BJP to take on the UPA at the Lok Sabha polls.
The main speakers at the executive will be party president Rajnath Singh, prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
On Sep 13, the second day of the executive, Advani will address a public meeting.