BJP Future - 6

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Advani’s to-do list for cadre</b>
pioneer.com
Kumar Uttam | Nagpur
Taking on the critics who have accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of changing its chal, charitra aur chehra, the party’s prime ministerial candidate LK Advani on Sunday insisted that it was still a “party with a difference”.

“<b>Politics is a slippery field. So whenever someone slips, people ask how we are a party with a difference. I still feel we are. The BJP is the only political group that is not run by an individual or a family,” </b>Advani said in his concluding remarks at the BJP’s national council meet.

Advani said that unlike many other political groups, the BJP had groomed a galaxy of leaders over many decades. <b>“Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley are just a few of them,</b>” Advani said while describing the BJP as a result of the nationalistic movement that started in 1925 (the year RSS was established).

<b>It was for this reason, Advani elaborated, that when someone spoke of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi becoming larger than the party, he felt glad about it. “The head of the family always feels proud when any member achieves what his elders have failed to,” </b>the senior leader pointed out.

Despite popular belief that he would distance himself from the Ayodhya issue, Advani endorsed the party's line that a grand temple should be built at the same site. One could raise the Jai Sri Ram slogan in the true sense only after the Ram temple was constructed, he said.

<b>Advising the party’s leaders against scoring a self goal, Advani referred to the electoral defeat in Rajasthan and said those who engineered inner-party feuds did more damage to themselves than to the party.</b>

He set out five tasks before the party<b>. First, the BJP should work with robust unity and unflinching resolve. Second, no complacency and over-confidence of the kind that proved costly to the party in 2004. Third, conduct an aggressive, creative and self-confident, mass-based campaign that focuses as much on party’s positive agenda for the future as on the failures and betrayal of the UPA Government. Fourth, unleash the energy of the youth in the party’s campaign. Fifth, ensure harmonious and mutually cooperative functioning between the BJP’s workers and workers of the NDA allies. </b>

Reiterating that removing despair and restoring hope would be the party’s priority, Advani also unveiled five major commitments that would form the BJP’s agenda: Promotion of employment-oriented economic growth through massive investment, revival of the agriculture sector, taking far-reaching reforms to promote good governance, zero tolerance towards terrorism and promotion of social economic justice and political empowerment for the downtrodden. “We will do it by vigorously implementing a positive agenda of good governance, development and security,” Advani elaborated.

<b>Describing the Congress as the fountainhead of corruption</b>, Advani also advised the BJP’s workers to resolve that the 1996 farce of an unstable Government must not be repeated and that 2009 was made the highest watermark ever in the BJP’s electoral performance.

Saying that the BJP would not abandon the ideal of corruption-free governance, Advani said that if the NDA came to power, he will ensure that the Prime Minister, his Cabinet Ministers and their relatives voluntarily declared their assets on an annual basis.

Lashing out at the Congress, the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate maintained that the <b>ruling party had always used Muslims as a vote bank without making any attempt for their welfare. Saying that Christians were being terrorised by the Congress in the name of a “communal” BJP</b>, Advani challenged the Congress for a debate between real and pseudo secularism. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->