Together and going up, up and UP

The meeting at Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee’s residence was attended by Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, Mahajan, Jaitley and BJP general secretary Sanjay Joshi, besides the party president.

The meeting named three other pointmen — Agriculture Minister Rajnath Singh for Bihar, Law Minister Arun Jaitley for Karnataka and BJP vice-president Pyarelal Khandelwal for Orissa.

Mahajan reportedly made a presentation at the meeting on the BJP’s prospects statewise. The problem-state is UP, which has a vast potential, but seems unlikely to deliver. UP, as a source put it, is the ‘‘central point (kendra-bindu)’’ for the BJP strategy. ‘‘It is natural, because the state accounts for 80 seats,’’ Naidu said.

Recent rumblings in Bihar have disturbed the balance between the BJP and JD(U). Naidu has asked Mahajan to sort out the seat-sharing issue with JD(U) president George Fernandes and Railways Minister Nitish Kumar. The directive came after Fernandes met Vajpayee, Advani and Naidu to resolve the dispute over five-odd seats.

The JD(U) wants 25 of 40 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP, on the other hand, wants 20. They had fought 25 and 15 seats, respectively, during last Lok Sabha polls. The BJP has staked claim on Muzaffarpur and Sheohar, held by Jai Narain Nishad and Anwarul Haque in the dissolved House. Both have joined the BJP now. The other seats sought by BJP are Gopalganj, Vaishali and Begusarai.