By IANS,
New Delhi : L.K. Advani Monday made a candid admission that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance lost the 2004 Lok Sabha elections because of “overconfidence” and “wrong slogans like India Shining”.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial hopeful, Advani said this while addressing a meeting of the party’s traders’ cell at the BJP national headquarters here on the day when the Election Commission announced the dates for the Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP leader, who has on earlier occasions too admitted this, said: “Even our opponents and foreign analysts had said that we will win.”
But the party lost because of “overconfidence and wrong slogans like India Shining,” Advani added.
The party’s election slogan ahead of the 2004 elections was “India Shining”, claiming that because of the efforts of its government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee various sectors of the country were rapidly progressing and India was shining in the eyes of the world.
Advani said though the NDA government did a good job the opponents took the party’s slogan to the people and asked them if India indeed was shining. “They went to the people and asked if their condition was shining. Farmers, businessmen, professionals, all have their own problems,” he said, admitting that large sections of society felt that the BJP was trying to gloss over their problems.