BJP bigwigs on campaign trail, manifesto delayed

The delay has caused logistical problems and now, party managers are looking at the availability of the committee members many of whom will have to file their nomination papers this week.

After failing to keep date with April 3 —the day the BJP was supposed to release its manifesto for the 2014 elections —the party may now miss the first phase of polling on April 7.

The reason: PM candidate Narendra Modi suggested some last-minute changes in the document, but the senior leaders —including manifesto committee chairman Murli Manohar Joshi — are not being able to free themselves from campaigns.

The delay, besides the embarrassment, has caused logistical problems and now, party managers are looking at the availability of the committee members many of whom will have to file their nomination papers this week.

Party leaders, however, admitted that the delay could have been avoided had the committee done its work properly. The party is already facing embarrassment with its plans for having a Vision Document-2025 getting shelved.

“The next government should make a vision document, because it would need some exchange of notes with bureaucrats,” a senior BJP leader said.

Sources, however, claimed that the document, prepared by Nitin Gadkari and Subramanian Swamy, was put in the cold storage for proposing some measures that could have snowballed into a controversy.

Similarly, the party’s plan to prepare a vision document for Muslims could never take off. “These ideas came to our mind where there was not so much of political activity. Now everybody is busy with electioneering, so people did not mind time for such an exercise,” claimed another BJP leader.