BJP leaders to be taken for a (boat) ride

It would be a dinner onboard a cruise boat on Friday night when top Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, including former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Kishenchand Advani, begin informal discussions into the party's debacle in the Lok Sabha elections and the way ahead.

About 32 senior leaders from across the country, including chief ministers of states ruled by the party, would gather in the evening at the Goa International Centre, facing the serene Banguim Beach about 5km from the state capital Panaji, to discuss the agenda for the three-day chintan baithak (brainstorming session), which would formally begin on Saturday, party sources said.

Later, the leaders would drive to the jetty nearby and board a cruise boat where they would be treated to a cultural programme and the culinary delights of the coastal state.

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Besides drawing up a strategy for the coming assembly polls, particularly in adjoining Maharashtra, and to take on the United Progressive Alliance government, the meeting would also discuss ways and means to strengthen ideological orientation at all levels, strengthen the party organisation and social and geographical expansion.

The top BJP brass, including Vajpayee, Leader of Opposition L K Advani and party president M Venkaiah Naidu had met the top Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh leadership in Delhi on Monday and discussed the party's return to its ideological constituency of Hindutva keeping in mind the National Democratic Alliance's poll debacle.

The leaders would also deliberate on the 'task ahead paper' circulated at the recent national executive meet in Mumbai, which included the back-to-basics programme to rejuvenate the party at the grassroots level.

"The chintan baithak is not to make or take decisions but to learn from the 2004 verdict, leave the past behind and move forward," Naidu had said ahead of the meeting.

Prominent leaders who would attend the meeting include Murli Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha, Arun Jaitley, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Sanjay Joshi, Bal Apte, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Pramod Mahajan, Jaswant Singh, Rajnath Singh, Kalraj Mishra, Pyarelal Khandelwal, Shahnawaz Hussain and Anant Kumar.