The three-day national executive meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party concluded in Ranchi, Jharkhand, on Friday with party president Lal Kishenchand Advani asking workers to make up their mind to sit in the opposition for five years.
Contrary to speculations, the issue of former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharti's suspension from the party did not cast a shadow over the meeting. Advani hinted at the possibility of her return to the party saying, "We will hold talks with her once she returns from her vacations."
Addressing the valedictory session, Vajpayee said there was no difference between 'Hindutva' and 'Bharatiyata'. "They are interchangeable concepts".
Party sources quoted him as saying that the "dark clouds of disappointment that had enveloped the party after the Lok Sabha election have disappeared".
"If anybody tries to take the cover of secularism to indulge in anti-Hindu politics and statecraft, the BJP will stand in their path like a rock, prepared to make any sacrifices," Advani said.
In his concluding remarks he said that the common thread in the three-day deliberations was the "belief that the BJP is really the chosen instrument of the divine to take the country out of its present problems and to lofty heights of achievements".
