Vajpayee is Villain No 1 for Cong

At a meeting of the party’s strategy committee held here last week, top Congress leaders felt the failure of the government to protect the frontiers must be exposed, whatever the consequences.

While some hawks suggested that a poster with photographs of the four leaders, calling them the “Gang of 4” responsible for the Kargil fiasco be published, others felt that a negative campaign of this nature could be counter-productive.

Later, it was agreed that the `Villain of the Year’ poster would suffice. It was felt by the party’s strategists that the killing of over 400 soldiers on theIndian side of the LoC and the imposition of a Kargil tax would certainly be a major poll issue.

The hawks, led by Pranab Mukherjee, Natwar Singh and Arjun Singh, were of the view that the BJP would have to pay a heavy price for the Kargil fiasco.

“By no stretch of imagination can it be construed as Vajpayee’s victory and the people are no fools to be swayed,” felt a majority of the members.

Six advertising agencies, including Madhyam and three others based in Mumbai, were short-listed by the party for a presentation. A meeting of the party’s publicity committee will be held tomorrow to select the agency and give a go-ahead for the campaign. The campaign’s launch will coincide with issue of the poll notification on August 4.

There is a possibility of Sonia Gandhi calling a meeting of the Congress Working Committee to ascertain members’ views. Some members have suggested to the Congress chief that Kargil should not be made an election issue and the party must focus on corruption and other failures ofthe Vajpayee government.

They feel the campaign should focus on Congress versus the BJP and not on Vajpayee versus Sonia with an emphasis on the Congress alone being able to provide a stable government for five years, pointing out that it maintained peace on the border for 27 years. Therefore, apart from Kargil, the shifting of Jagmohan, the telecom scam, disinvestment and other issues which highlight the failures of the 16-month government should be the focus of the campaign.

The BJP is also in the process of finalising its campaign strategy. A meeting of the party’s campaign committee will be held on July 22 at the party headquarters to be presided over by Advani.

The party has received about 50 points for its poll campaign. But a catchy slogan like “Able Leader, Stable Government” of the 1998 campaign is yet to be coined. `Victor of Kargil’, `Man of the New Millennium’ and certain other such slogans are still under consideration by the committee.