Worried BJP plans camps to check Kargil fallout

NEW DELHI, MAY 19: Worried over the fallout of the Kargil crisis on its fortunes in the ensuing Lok Sabha polls, the BJP has decided to o...

NEW DELHI, MAY 19: Worried over the fallout of the Kargil crisis on its fortunes in the ensuing Lok Sabha polls, the BJP has decided to organise a series of training camps across the country for its leaders so that they are able to put the issue across in a positive light.

The first such training camp, being held against the backdrop of the operations launched by the armed forces to flush out infiltrators from the Kargil region, will be inaugurated by party general secretary K N Govindacharya at Jhinjholi on Sunday. Union Home Minister L K Advani is scheduled to address the valedictory session the next day. Leaders from 10 states and union territories, including Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat, are slated to attend the two-day camp.

Similar training camps will be held next month at Calcutta for the party units from eastern and north-eastern states and Bangalore for the southern states, including Maharashtra.Senior journalist Balbir Punj has been made incharge of these camps.

The training camps, said a senior BJP leader, are being organised as part of an exercise to train leaders at various levels in the art of media-management, especially in view of the approaching elections.

But what would have been a routine exercise has assumed significance because of the ongoing operations in Kargil. The party is getting increasingly edgy about its fallout on its electoral prospects. 8220;We8217;d like our leaders to put the issue across to the people in the correct perspective so as to derive maximum mileage out of it,8221; the leader said. The party is, consequently, likely to discuss threadbare various points emanating from the Kargil crisis.The importance attached to these camps can be gauged from the fact that most of the senior leaders have been deputed to attend them. These include party vice-presidents Jana Krishnamurthy, J P Mathur and K L Sharma, Union Information and Broadcating Minister Pramod Mahajan, Delhi BJPincharge V K Malhotra and Rajya Sabha MP Dinanath Mishra, who was instrumental in setting up the party8217;s media-cell way back in 1991.

But Mishra is bed-ridden and his participation is doubtful.

Papers on various issues concerning media-management are likely to be presented by Govindachrya, Mahajan and Punj, as also by Kanchan Gupta and Panchajanya editor Tarun Vijay.