BJP, Cong poll strategy soon

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress are close to finalising their advertising and communication strategies for Lok Sabha polls.

The BJP has formed its media campaign panel comprising Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Dina Nath Mishra and Balbir Punj, who will report to LK Advani and party chief M Venkaiah Naidu.

The committee will meet for the first time tomorrow to discuss the tone and tenor of the party's ads.

Anticipating a heavy splurge by the Congress to counter the NDA government's "India Shining" campaign, the BJP has raised its budgets.

"We have shown during the last round of assembly elections that we can run very effective campaigns," said a BJP leader.

This time too we will spare no efforts to remain one-up on the Congress," said a BJP media cell member.

The Congress party's core committee for media campaign headed by Ahmed Patel has directed Madison Communications and Leo Burnett to redo the entire campaign presentations by them.

"The gradient of the blueprints presented to us was not correct. We've asked the agencies to recalibrate the campaign," said a Congress party source.