Advani by Modi side at meet,BJP cheers up

BJP begins a formal exercise to bridge the gulf at top before it begins an effective poll campaign.

Moving on from the internal crisis arising after Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modis projection as partys chief campaigner early last month,the BJP Thursday began a formal exercise to bridge the gulf at the top before it begins an effective and aggressive campaign for the next elections.

At the BJP parliamentary board meeting today,party patriarch L K Advani and Modi sat next to each other. The meeting discussed the partys poll campaign plans and will meet again on Monday. During the intervening period,Advani is slated to travel to Nagpur on Friday ostensibly to attend a marriage in the family of a RSS leader but is likely to hold discussion with RSS leadership. BJP president Rajnath Singh is also likely to travel to Nagpur on Saturday and is expected to touch base with RSS leadership. Sources present at the meeting today said it was a harmonious meeting and sought to claim that the party has unshackled itself and left behind the acrimony of the previous month.

Other sources,however,spoke of divergence of views on the partys proposed campaign for the Lok Sabha elections. While Modi was learnt to have stressed upon the need for a centralised effective and aggressive campaign on the line of Gujarat pattern,Advani was learnt to have stressed that the campaign plan needs to be tailored according to the geographic and political situations of different states,sources said. Advanis suggestion,sources admitted,was seen as an apparent attempt to highlight the limitations of Gujarats campaign style across different states and appeared to be in favour of a decentralised campaign approach. Meanwhile,sources pointed out that Modi will be interacting with some 1,500 BJP workers from Bihar through tele-conferencing tomorrow.

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Todays meeting also discussed the alleged misuse of CBI in the wake of its chargesheet in the Ishrat Jahan case,among other issues.

Sources in the meeting said general secretaries have been assigned different responsibilities on campaign-related strategies. While Rajiv Pratap Rudy was reportedly asked to work out a strategy for radio campaign,Modi confidant Amit Shah has been entrusted with the responsibility to work out strategy for social media outreach.

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