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New Delhi: Varun Gandhi would not campaigning in any of the three poll-bound states of Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunchal Pradesh. He was the one who caused the party considerable unease in the Lok Sabha polls with his Pilibhit speech.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, will be to addressing rallies in Maharashtra and Haryana, as per a speakers’ lists submitted by the party to the Election Commission.

BJP vice-president and the party’s campaign chief for the three states, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, said the lists are to make sure that their helicopter expenses are recorded with the Election Commission. This is in agreement with the views of the party’s state units.

He, however, said that there are more star performers in the party and those names which are not mentioned could also be campaigning.

Mumbai: BJP leader Gopinathi Munde’s daughter Pankaja Munde Palve has been fielded from Parli Assembly constituency. In the party’s second list of 20 candidates, Pankaja’s name has been flashed.

Pankaja was the campaign manager for her father when he successfully fought the Lok Sabha polls from Beed.

The name of Poonam Mahajan, daughter of the late Pramod Mahajan, has already been announced for the Ghatkopar West seat.

Before this, the party had earlier denied Lucknow MP Lalji Tandon’s son, Gopaljee Tandon, ticket from Lucknow West Assembly constituency after a section of the party’s Central Election Committee had raised strong objections to the “growing tendency to perpetuate dynastic politics in the party”.

Munde’s nephew Dhananjay — who is vice-president of the Beed Zilla Parishad — was also in the race for the seat.

There were incessant calls from Dhananjay for BJP state organising secretary Raghunath Kulkarni and Munde even as the party CEC meeting was on.

With the loss of one of its seat to BJP in Madhya Pradesh and securing a majority in the assembly, Congress could only manage to win two seats in Gujarat. The party, however, retained its seat in Andhra Pradesh.

The loss of seat in Gujarat would have been a major turnoff for Congress since Rahul Gandhi’s revival map is this state.

Of the two seats the Congress won, it managed to retain Dhoraji and wrested the Kondinar constituency from BJP. Congress leadership in the state accepted the results were rather disappointing.

“The results of the byelections are not as per our expectations. We will undertake a detailed analysis in the coming days to see what went wrong,” Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) chief Siddharth Patel said.

He added, “the results should be examined in the context of the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, which showed Congress losing hold over seats where byelections were held.”

Moreover, with Mr Modi coming under pressure after the Lok Sabha elections, when BJP only managed to win 15 of the 26 parliamentary seats in the state, and the reversal suffered by the party in its stronghold of Junagarh , the bypoll results were being considered an important indicator of BJP’s and Mr Modi’s popularity.

New Delhi: With its loss of power since 2004, BJP is banking on Mr. L K Advani to bring in some stability during the party’s transition.

Mr Advani has indicated that the central leaders will also be consulted to go ahead with the succession plan following the end of the tenure of BJP President Rajnath Singh.

Rajnath and Advani along with other leaders are believed to be holding consultations within BJP.

Advani said, “All will be consulted. Even those who are here (in Delhi) will be consulted. Generally, the approach will be that nobody is to be excluded while considering the possibility. Though this much is true, the focus should not be on those who are based in Delhi (alone).”

BJP’s campaign was adversely affected in 2009 Lok Sabha elections and resulted in losing the power, which saw strong interference from the Sangh.

RSS is hoping that Advani will take this forward in a smooth manner and try to regain the lost stability.

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat high court has ordered the government to lift the ban on a controversial book on Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

The court said the government had not “applied its mind” to arrive at the opinion that the book was “against national interest” and would affect public peace.

The book was written by Jaswant Singh, a leader in India’s Hindu nationalist main opposition party, the BJP. The party subsequently expelled him. The writer of the book has welcomed the decision and said: “I am thrilled”.

The state government said it had banned the book for “defamatory references” to India’s first home minister.

India’s first home minister, Vallabhbhai Patel, is a political icon in his home state of Gujarat.

The Gujarat government is expected to issue a statement reacting to the court decision. It is not clear whether it will issue a fresh ban giving a different reasons.

Bangalore: One week’s time has been granted by CM BS Yeddyurappa to Minister for Social Welfare D Sudhakar, to resign from the state cabinet.

Allegedly, Sudhakar has been the second accussed of cheating in bank case involving amount of 7 crores. The CBI filed a chargesheet against him and since then he has been under constant pressure to step down from his post.

Apparently Sudhakar raised loans from nationalized banks in the name of existing and nonexistent employees of two different firms with which he has been associated.

Sudhakar met the CM on Monday and later the Chief Minister commented, “Considering his explanation, I have given him a week’s time,”.

The hearing of the case is set for October 3 and the Special Court of CBI is in-charge for the same.

New Delhi: Recently many factors affected BJP’s harmony and unity, and hence Rajnath Singh is trying his best to maintain the party in unity by all means.

On Tuesday, over lunch, issues were to be discussed by Singh with the opposing parties for the upcoming Assembly elections.

This meeting was not favored by his opponents; however, Rajnath was determined to take the last shots to communicate views of his party leaders with unity. Seniors like Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and M Venkaiah Naidu were also present at the meeting along with party general secretary Ram Lal.

As we all know the tenure of BJP President is now coming to an end, this meeting seems to be the most suitable thing to do for the party and the leaders.

Apparently, Vasundhara Raje is “unwell” and hence the party wants to wait till she gets better and the crisis over her resignation can be taken up.

In the meanwhile, September 4 has been set the date to discuss the needs for early campaigning for the upcoming Assembly polls.

Jaswant Singh on Wednesday fell a victim for praising Pakistan founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah when the BJP summarily expelled him from the party, a decision that left him “hurt” and “saddened” but he will not appeal against or seek a review of.

The decision to expel Singh, a Lok Sabha member and a former Union Minister, was taken at the Parliamentary Board of the party which met in Shimla during the opening session of the three-day brainstorming session of the top leaders.

BJP President Rajnath Singh, who had on Tuesday issued a statement totally distancing the party from Jaswant Singh’s book “Jinnah – India, Partition, Independence”, announced the decision to the media in Shimla.

“I had issued a statement yesterday that the party fully dissociates itself from the contents of the book. Today I put up the matter before the Parliamentary Board which decided to end his primary membership.”

“So he has been expelled. From now onwards he will not be a member of any body of the party or be an office bearer,” he said on the expulsion of the 71-year-old party veteran.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Sunday accused Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee of indulging in shadow-boxing against West Bengal’s ruling Left Front in the company of the Congress.

Referring to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s media interviews in which he has said that the Congress was open to a post-poll alliance with the Left, BJP national spokesperson S.S. Ahluwalia told reporters here: “It is clear that the Congress cannot do without the Left parties.

“Even Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) general secretary Prakash Karat has said that his party wanted the Congress to support a Third Front government from outside. So, it is clear that both the Congress and the CPI-M are ready to enter into a wedlock again,” Ahluwalia said.

He said state Congress president Pranab Mukherjee has also categorically pointed out that his party’s alliance with the Trinamool was not based on any pre-condition that Congress will not tie up with the Left.

“With Manmohan Singh saying he would like to see Mamata in his cabinet, should I believe then that she will be a minister in a United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in which the Left will either be a participant or a prop?” asked Ahluwalia, who is also the BJP’s chief whip in the Rajya Sabha.

“It seems it’s all shadow-boxing between the Congress-Trinamool combine and the Left,” he said.

Ahluwalia said his party was not inviting Banerjee to be part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) as she was with the Congress now. “We are not offering her any allurement to return to NDA,” he said.

He said people genuinely opposed to the CPI-M or the Congress should not vote for either of the two. “Voting for the Congress means supporting the CPI-M and vice versa,” he added.

Ahluwalia claimed that the BJP will emerge as the single largest party and the NDA the largest group in the elections.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Jharkhand Monday demanded that paramilitary forces be deployed at all the strongrooms in the state where electronic voting machines (EVM) have been kept after two phases of polling.

“Why has the state police been deployed at strongrooms where the sealed EVMs are kept? We suspect the machines could be tampered with to help candidates of the Congress and JMM (Jharkhand Mukti Morcha),” state BJP president Raghubar Das told IANS.

“The Election Commission and the governor failed to conduct free and fair elections in the state and large-scale violence took place. Now the EVM machines are guarded by the state police and homeguards. Till last election, the machines were guarded by paramilitary forces. We demand that paramilitary forces be deployed at all the 14 strongrooms of the state where the sealed EVM machines are kept,” he said.

Polling for the 14 Lok Sabha seats from Jharkhand took place in the first two phases of elections April 16 and April 23.

The BJP leader added that his party workers would now guard the strong rooms as they had no faith in the present government.

“We have no faith in the present state machinery. Governor Syed Sibte Razi is working as a Congress agent in the state,” Das remarked.

Personnel of the Jharkhand Armed Police (JAP) and the Special Auxiliary Police (SAP) of the state police are currently deployed at the strongrooms.