The NDA will release an updated agenda for governance before Lok Sabha polls. According to Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, the revised agenda would include achievements of the A.B. Vajpayee Government vis-a-vis the promises made before last Lok Sabha polls. ‘‘We would essentially update the last agenda,’’ he said, adding that it would be ‘‘a more extended version this time’’.Advani wasn’t forthcoming on the Vision-2004 document, which the BJP plans releasing separately along side the NDA agenda before polls. The party has appointed a committee headed by Law Minister Arun Jaitley to draw the document.Party president M. Venkaiah Naidu has already hinted that it would contain the BJP’s pet issues. Since the party has put three contentious issues — Ayodhya, common civil code and abrogation of Article 370 — on the backburner, it remains to be seen how the BJP packages them in Vision-2004.The task is delicate because the party has to reconcile its ideological moorings to the realpolitik of coalition politics. The process is on — therefore, BJP is marketing Hindutva as nationalism. Advani argued that ‘‘more and more party activists and supporters have come to appreciate that basically, this is a party which puts nation first and is concerned with national interests. Hindutva is not development. Hindutva means acting in national interest. The policies which BJP has pursued promote national interest. This has been so when BJP has been in government too.’’He said: ‘‘The actual clash is not between ideology and national interest. The clash comes when it is national interest versus vote-bank politics.’’Unruffled by the Congress plan to counter the India Shining with India Cheated, Advani said: ‘‘Let them do it. We will relate it to garibi-hatao and ask them how many years ago did they cheat people. Say what you may, about the BJP, why object to India Shining. It is nothing but denunciation of India on the lines of Katherine Mayo’s book Mother India.”
