NEW DELHI, April 26: The Bhartiya Janata Party is likely to contest the forthcoming parliamentary elections in alliance with its coalition partners on the basis of a common minimum programme.The party will not come out with an election manifesto this time and instead, will issue an amended version of the National Agenda for Governance (NAG) formulated after its ascent to power last year, as a common manifesto of the BJP and its allies, a senior BJP leader told The Indian Express today.Whether the BJP and its coalition partners will contest on their respective election symbols or as a group called the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), is yet to be decided.``One of the achievements of the 13-month crisis-ridden BJP-led Government is that its loose confederation has been cemented into an alliance'', another BJP leader said.The BJP, by adopting the NAG as its election manifesto, will try and establish its "secular credentials" by dropping contentious issues like Article 370 and construction of the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple in Ayodhya.Although the BJP hopes to win enough seats with its alliance partners to form a Government on its own, by projecting Vajpayee's secular face against the party's strident Hindutva face, the party has kept its doors open for the entry of other parties in post-poll scenario, in case its tally fell short of a majority. The party hopes its changed strategy will pay rich dividends. ``We will tell the people that the Opposition ganged up to topple a smoothly-run Government without having the blueprint of an alternative Government'' said BJP general secretary Venkaiah Naidu.A more enterprising three-time BJP member of Parliament has even coined a slogan for the alliance, ``Ek MP ka sawaal hai. Apko dekhna hai ki is bar BJP ek vote se na haare (We need only one MP. You have to ensure that the BJP Government is not ousted by one vote this time).''The BJP will enter into an electoral alliance with Om Prakash Chautala's Indian National Lok Dal instead of Bansi Lal's Haryana Vikas Party. BJP leaders have yet to decide on what to do with its coalition Government in Haryana with HVP, party sources said.The party also hopes Karnataka Chief Minister J H Patel will enter into seat adjustments with Ram Krishna Hegde's Lok Shakti and both in turn would have a tactical alliance with the BJP. Three other states where the BJP may face some problem in cementing its alliance are Maharashtra, where the Shiv Sena has been demanding its electoral alliance with the BJP to be extended to other states; Punjab, where the Shiromani Akali Dal faction led by Gurcharan Singh Tohra will contest separately against the Badal-BJP alliance and Bihar, where the Samata Party-Anand Mohan Singh combine may seek a larger share of seats. BJP also hopes to evoke some kind of seat-sharing formula with Telugu Desam which has been dumped by the Left parties in Andhra Pradesh. Top
