In its three-day national executive meet, the BJP has worked out a first-of-its-kind decentralised campaign strategy for the coming Lok Sabha elections. A bouquet of issues would be targeted at various regional, social and demographic constituencies, with a good governance charter being the overarching theme. Prime Ministerial candidate L K Advani will be the face of the national campaign.

While Advani reassured the 7,000-odd party delegates assembled in the city of the RSS headquarters, that ?the party had not forgotten Ram,? he also reached out to Muslims saying that the previous Congress-led governments had taken them for a ride. ?I want to tell the Muslims that they have been used as a vote bank by the Congress. I want to tell them that their welfare alone would be our concern. Shahnawaz Hussein has just shown how the Muslims in Gujarat have the highest per capita income,? he said. The three-day affair showed party president Rajnath Singh being unusually subdued on Hindutva, with his speeches going no further than the promise of a temple at Ayodhya.

This had a lot to do with the meeting of the top RSS leadership with the BJP brass at Advani?s residence recently. The Sangh, while acknowledging the BJP?s autonomy in its political decisions, asked the party ?to accommodate ideology to the extent possible?.

The second-generation BJP leaders launched a scathing attack on the Congress for perpetuating ?dynastic politics? in the name of ?Gen Next leadership? and said that the ?BJP alone gave the youth an outlet to grow and prosper.?

The three-day affair was not without its share of pluses for the BJP. One, there was a kind of synergy on show between Advani and Rajnath that hasn?t been in evidence so far. Two, the entire second generation leadership of the BJP is being drafted to manage this Lok Sabha campaign. Venkaiah Naidu will look after the southern states; Sushma Swaraj takes charge in Madhya Prdaesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand; Arun Jaitley in UP, Bihar, Delhi, Punjab and Chandigarh; Ananth Kumar in MP and Karnataka; Shanta Kumar and Bhagat Singh Koshiari in J&K, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Haryana; Narendra Modi in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa; V Satish in Orissa; Saudan Singh in Rajasthan; and S S Ahluwalia in Assam and the Northeast.

Three, realising that Modi?s charisma stood out in the BJP, Advani indicated yet again who could lead the party in the post-Advani BJP. ?I was once asked if Modi has become bigger than the party. But the head of the family only gets overwhelmed when told that one of the younger members of the family has made a name bigger than the elders in the family. While showering encomiums on Atal Bihari Vajpayee, people used to trash the BJP. Modi, however, has had to face the worst kind of motivated criticism,? he said.

Four, the BJP in the days to come will highlight the issues that it thinks have hit the people hardest — job cuts and losses, terror strikes, and zero-tolerance to corruption. These issues were discussed in the party?s resolutions over two days.

A unique feature of the national executive was a power-point presentation that stressed that the party must conduct a positive campaign, outlining an alternative governance agenda, instead of just attacking the UPA government.

Almost all senior leaders agreed that infighting had cost them dear in state elections in Rajasthan and Delhi. ?We scored self-goals. More than the party, the leaders responsible for this did harm to themselves,? said Advani.