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RSS issues guidelines to 'cleanse' govt

George Iype in New Delhi

Upset by the Bharatiya Janata Party's defeat in the assembly polls in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leadership has prepared a set of guidelines for the BJP to follow the path of "political correctness."

RSS sources said the agenda put forward to the BJP leadership is to ensure that there is a cleansing operation within the party and the Atal Bihari Vajpayee coalition government.

The RSS guidelines advocate that the BJP leaders should display a strict political ideology and the party should enforce a stronger regimen of discipline amongst its cadres.

The agenda wants the BJP leadership to carefully choose the party's state and district leaders and candidates in future and enforce a full-steam Hindutva agenda in the party.

It also urges the BJP to raise a 1,000-strong corps of ideologues to bring the party back from the ''Congress culture'' to which, RSS leadership says, the party had fallen prey in the last five years.

The RSS leadership has reportedly identified a few factors --corruption, love of office amongst the BJP cadres, lack of ideological training and discipline and a loosening of the command structure -- that have considerably contributed to the rout in the state polls.

The Sangh leadership has therefore recommended to the BJP to train at least 1,000 upper level cadres to strengthen the party in every district across the country.

The BJP high command has also been told to ensure that its district and state-level party chiefs do not contest elections, but should always remain campaign managers.

While the RSS bosses have not particularly blamed Vajpayee or BJP president Shashikant 'Kushabhau' Thakre for the poll verdict, Sangh leaders feel the main reason for the debacle is the poor performance of the government and the infighting among BJP leaders in many states.

Moreover, the Sangh leadership feels the Vajpayee government has failed to rein in some of its coalition partners like All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary J Jayalalitha and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Bannerjee.

Sources said the RSS review on the poll defeat has kept out Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani, once a favourite of the Sangh leaders. However, the RSS leadership is said to be have praised only one minister in the Vajpayee Cabinet: Human Resource Development Minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi.

The RSS top brass is pleased that Dr Joshi had taken up the Hindutva project of "Indianising, spiritualising and nationalising" the school and college curricula in the past two months even though it invited vehement criticism from Opposition parties.

Thakre, whose first year in office as Advani's successor, has seen the BJP plummet to one of the worst defeats in its history, is trying a damage control exercise with the RSS and is expected to display harsh postures in the coming days on the Hindutva agenda.

He has already stated that the BJP lost the poll because it alienated its traditional Hindu voters who were put off by the coalition government's inaction on the Hindutva agenda.

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