NEW DELHI, 14 March 2004 — The Bharatiya Janata Party is considering suing newspapers that alleged that Bollywood stars were paid by the party to join it. Party chief M. Venkaiah Naidu described the charges as lies.
He said the BJP had extended an open invitation to all to join its campaign to bring back the first true non-Congress government. He said celebrities not only from Bollywood, but from all fields were joining the party and asserted that the BJP did not believe in ‘’commercial campaigning”.
Naidu said at the news conference that he had been told that five people in Bombay had already served legal notices to the newspaper that published the report. Saying that it was a serious matter to publish allegations without evidence, he warned of similar action if any other newspaper published such “concocted reports.”
‘’In response to our public invitation, celebrities from various fields are joining the BJP,’’ he said, adding ‘’even Congress activists are coming to us.’’ It is a turning point in India’s history that a non-Congress prime minister is running for a second term, he said.
BJP spokesman Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said: “We are in favor of a serious election campaign. We don’t believe in a sponsored commercial campaign. Our star political campaigners will be leading the offensive and not film or television stars.”
Naqvi said among the big screen stars only “party workers” such as federal ministers Shatrughan Sinha and Vinod Khanna and MPs Hema Malini and Dara Singh will actively campaign for the party.
Meanwhile, former minister and Chhattisgarh unit chief of the Nationalist Congress Party, Vidya Charan Shukla who had attained notoriety with Jan Sangh leaders during the 1975-77 national emergency, and Rafiq Saddiq, son of former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister G.M. Saddiq, joined the BJP yesterday.
Meneka Gandhi’s son Varun Gandhi, who recently joined the party, said he had been asked to kick off the party’s campaign in central Gujarat.
In a separate development, former Congress rebels Mamata Banerjee and P.A. Sangma decided to test their electoral fortune by joining hands and forming a new front. Sangma’s party that split from Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party yesterday merged with Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamul Congress to form the Nationalist Trinamul Congress.
Addressing a joint press conference, Banerjee and Sangma announced their parties’ merger. The new party, led by Banerjee, would retain the symbol of flower with grass of the Trinamul Congress. They would be allies of the ruling National Democratic Alliance. The merger was announced in the presence of Nagaland Chief Minister N. Rio, who is chairman of the Northeast People’s Forum, an NDA ally.
