BJP brainstorming session begins

The Bharatiya Janata Party's three-day brainstorming session got underway in Dona Paula in Goa on Saturday with the focus firmly on the party's defeat in the last General Election.

The party's top 31 BJP leaders and Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh joint-general secretary Madan Das Devi began the
discussions at the Goa International Centre, about 5 km from Panaji.

Besides the poll debacle, the party's social and geographical expansion and its strategy for the coming assembly elections in Maharashtra, Bihar, Jharkhand, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh will come up for discussion at the conclave, party sources said.

Top party leaders, including former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Leader of the Opposition Lal Kishenchand Advani and party president M Venkaiah Naidu, met informally on Friday evening to chalk out

the agenda for the meeting.

The conclave is being attended among others by Murli Manohar Joshi, Sushma Swaraj, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Yashwant Sinha, Sanjay Joshi, Arun Jaitley and Narendra Modi.

Senior party leader Jaswant Singh is not attending the meeting, while Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti and
Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje are expected to join the discussions on Saturday.