The BJP’s Sankalp rally, attended by Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani and party president Venkaiah Naidu, here today had a two-fold thrust.The first was a clear move away from Hindutva as the focus of the campaign to a broad attack on the Digvijay Singh government for its perceived failures on the development front apart from the attack on the discrepancies in electoral rolls. The second was a clear reiteration by the central leadership that it would be Uma Bharti who would lead the party’s poll campaign.While the BJP has been talking of targeting Singh on the issue of power, roads and the lack of overall development of the state, this has been observed more in the breach. Ever since Bharti launched the party campaign in MP almost three months ago in Satna, roads and electricity have taken a backseat to issues such as cow slaughter, the riots in Ganj Basoda and the struggle over the Bhojshala.There has been a feeling in the state unit that the emphasis on such issues was playing into Digvijay’s hands and much of the anti-incumbency factor would be lost if the campaign carried on in this fashion. Signals to this effect had also been sent by the relatively lacklustre response to Praveen Togadia’s brand of vituperation in the state.Moreover, even within the state unit, moderate elements such as state BJP chief Kailash Joshi were clearly uncomfortable with the hardline taken on Bhojshala by Sangh diehards such as organising general secretary Kaptan Singh Solanki.Today, speaker after speaker, including Bharti and Advani, emphasised that the state government had failed to live up to its promise to the electorate, which they claimed was a contrast to the BJP’s performance at the Centre. Naidu challenged Singh to compare his achievements with the NDA’s performance at the Centre. Perhaps, nothing emphasised this symbolic shift in emphasis than Advani choosing to refer to his rath yatra in the context of roads. Claiming that the rath yatra made him an expert on the importance of roads, he said the condition of the roads was a clear indicator of the lack of development in the state.The party once again officially announced that Bharti would be the leader of its poll campaign. Joshi said that in view of Bharti relinquishing her post at the Centre and campaigning hard in the state, the central leadership should announce that she would lead the party’s poll campaign.
