NEW DELHI, 20 December 2003 — Weeks after the defeat of his party in assembly elections in Delhi, the president of the state chapter of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Madan Lal Khurana, yesterday resigned and said he was retiring from “active electoral politics”.

Khurana will be appointed governor of Rajasthan. A formal government announcement will be made in a few days.

BJP vice president Harshvardhan has been appointed as the new party chief in Delhi. Khurana, who is also a member of the lower house of Parliament, quit his Motinagar assembly seat on Wednesday.

BJP spokesman Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told reporters that Harshvardhan’s name was unanimously approved by all 19 party MLAs at a party meeting to select a successor to Khurana.

Harshvardhan told a news conference that his priority would be to strengthen the party in Delhi ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections and reinstall Delhi as the BJP stronghold.

He said the BJP would make all-out efforts to win all the seven parliamentary seats in Delhi.

Later in the day, Jagdish Mukhi was unanimously re-elected leader of the BJP Legislature Party in the Delhi Assembly.

Mukhi, who was BJP Legislature Party leader in the previous assembly, said he would try to prove within six months that the newly elected Congress legislators were not the right choice of the electorate.

Meanwhile, BJP President M. Venkaiah Naidu has said he will have a blueprint for the Lok Sabha elections in place by March 30.

The draft will incorporate the major elements on his drawing board: alliances, the campaign theme and style and the micro-level strategies. “The picture has to be clear by March,” Naidu said during an informal chat with a group of journalists yesterday.

He said the BJP’s key slogan will be “Shaktishaali Bharat, shaktishaali BJP” (powerful India, powerful BJP), coined to appeal to the young voters.

The BJP’s campaign in the recent assembly elections and the one in Gujarat was also based on the same slogan. “We are slowly working on a theme to create an emotional upsurge by raking up patriotic fervor. India is a big country but for 50 years it remained far behind on the global map.

“For the last five years, India has been on the right path. This message will appeal to the new generation,” Naidu said.