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Reach out to minorities, stop airing dissent in public: PM

Close on the heels of the Bharatiya Janata Party's severe setback in the local bodies elections in its Gujarat bastion, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Sunday asked party activists to make special efforts to reach out to the minorities and not to air dissent in public in order to maintain the BJP's image.

Addressing the BJP national executive, which discussed the party's strategy for the forthcoming assembly election in five states, Vajpayee said it was necessary to carry forward the Nagpur message issued by party president Bangaru Laxman of taking along the minorities.

"Our doors are open to all sections, including the minorities, and special efforts have to be made to ensure that the party works for this," he said. "The BJP is known for its image and we have to ensure that this image is kept," Vajpayee said, adding, in an apparent reference to growing dissent in the party, "the members should express their views at the appropriate forum."

The prime minister emphasised the need for strengthening government-party relations and asked BJP cadres to explain the government's decisions in the proper perspective, BJP vice-president Jana Krishnamurthy told reporters.

The BJP national executive, chaired by Bangaru Laxman, heard reports about the party's status in Assam, Kerala, Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal where an assembly election will be held next year.

Vajpayee told the meeting that harsh economic decisions were taken only after due discussions among the members of the ruling National Democratic Alliance and that party cadres should keep the people informed of the circumstances under which these were taken.

Laxman, Vajpayee said, had been elected unanimously by the party and not as per his wishes as was being portrayed in the media.

In his opening remarks, Laxman asked the party to gear up for the assembly election as "we have no time to lose. We must begin our preparations in right earnest from now itself. We need to ready our organisational machinery in these states to face the challenge."

The BJP president said the response to his Nagpur message has been "beyond the party's own expectation, especially among the minorities, Dalits, Adivasis and other backward classes." He said it was probably because of this that there was a "sense of panic" among the BJP's adversaries, mainly the Congress and the Communists.

On former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao being found guilty in the JMM case, he said the Congress might try to disown or distance itself from Rao to salvage some of its lost moral ground. "But the incontrovertible fact is that it is a judgment convicting not merely him as an individual but the entire Congress party and its culture of resorting to every corrupt means to cling to power."

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