The Bharatiya Janata Party national executive began its three-day conclave in Mumbai on Tuesday to chalk out the future course of action and fine-tune strategy for the upcoming assembly elections.
The meeting began with Vande Mataram, lighting of a lamp and inaugural address of party president M Venkaiah Naidu.
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There was a virtual stampede among journalists to click Modi's photo as the embattled CM arrived.
Modi was in the spotlight recently when Vajpayee, while holidaying in Manali, Himachal Pradesh, listed the Gujarat riots of 2002 as one of the factors for the party's defeat in the general election.
Keshubhai Patel, said to be "leading" the anti-Modi brigade in Gujarat, was not present when the meeting started.
For the moment the party has put the Modi issue in the backburner and said it would not be discussed at the meeting, being held at Hotel Renaissance at Powai.
At the beginning of the meeting, BJP Maharashtra unit chief Gopinath Munde welcomed all the 199 delegates from across the country.
Cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Siddhu, film star-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha and small screen bahu Tulsi Irani were among the delegates.
In the inaugural speech, Naidu said, "Dangerous portents of competitive psuedo-secularism are emboldening terrorism."
He was alluding to the support extended by the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party to Ishrat Jahan Sheikh, the Mumbra-based girl who was killed in an encounter with the Ahmedabad police on June 15.
He said seven points would be discussed at the meeting and among them would be the rise of "dangerous pseudo-secularism" and the plight of rural poor and farmers.
The BJP, he said, would play the role of a neutral opposition.
The party will also cultivate new leaders, he added.
With inputs from Press Trust of India