Bjp Members Asked To Prepare For Ls Polls
The three-day conclave of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) concluded at Virar in Thane district yesterday with a call to all party units to gear up for mid-term Lok Sabha polls in view of an unstable coalition government at the Centre and embark on an organised fund-raising drive which should be transparent and above board.
This was announced at a press conference here by BJP president L K Advani, who summed up the closed-door conclave as a brainstorming exercise marked by great candour and camaraderie on various organisational issues and problems which have made the party a tiger caged by itself.
Replying to a flurry of questions on relations with other organisations of the ideological Sangh Parivar, the BJP president said that the address by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) general secretary H V Seshadri was an inspiring call to the BJP to function in such a manner that it is a party with a difference.
Elaborating on the clean fund raising drive, the BJP president said that three types of receipt books would be circulated to party units for collections of Rs 1,000, Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 from members and life-long associates of the party who could commit financial assistance every year.
The names of contributors would be logged into computers at the party's central office, he said adding that this system will meet all our needs for elections.
The internal focus of the party in 1997 would be on operational organisation and the BJP national council would meet for three days at Thiruananthapuram from March 7 in the party's effort to extend its influence into south, he said.
A formal statement issued at the conclusion of the bjp +chintan shibir+ at virar indicated that the bjp was prepared to head a national government if given the opportunity.
The statement noted that +the rapidly widening mass support, which manifested itself last year in the form of the bjp emerging as the single largest party in the 11th lok sabha and atal behari vajpayee being sworn in as the prime minister, has given us confidence that we can both aim for, and scale, still higher summits of achievement to better serve the nation's interests in everything we do and when given a chance to govern, to head a national effort to make india prosperous, poverty-free, strong and united society+.
The past decade has seen the bjp register spectacular growth in popular influence and electoral strength, which is as unprecedented in the party's annals as it is unparalleled in the political history of independent india, the statement declared adding +it indicates the innate soundness of the party's hindutva ideology and its growing relevance for contemporary india.
However, the phenomenal growth of the party has brought in many challenges and problems in its wake, prominent among them being organisational, the statement observed.
Some recent developments in the organisational sphere particularly the happenings in gujarat, have brought this challenge into sharp focus+, the statement noted.
To a question, the bjp president claimed that though +we kept in touch with rajasthan developments all through the conclave, the discussions did not focus on it+. He expressed confidence that the rajasthan government was stable and would prove its majority on the floor of the assembly on january 20.