BJP to replicate Goa model for Lok Sabha polls

PANAJI: The BJP will approach opinion makers from all religions and talk to them about the party, a strategy it adopted during Goa polls, for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, a senior party official said today.

The BJP workers will sit with opinion makers from all the religions and talk to them about the organisation, which has been "wrongly labelled" as a communal party, BJP's national secretary Aarati Mehra told reporters here.

"While campaigning for Goa (polls), we launched an exercise to reach to the heads of all the religions, including the Archbishop, talking to them about the party. We are a nationalistic party and not what we have been projected as," Mehra said.

"We will tell them not to go (for polls) with pre-determined mindset," she said.

"We will work with sensitivity," she added. The party in Goa had given tickets to eight Roman Catholic candidates, earning the support from the minority community, which led the BJP to win majority of the seats for the Legislative Assembly elections held last year.

Situation across the country is similar to that which existed in Goa before March 2012 polls, Mehra said.

"People want change from the Congress government. They are fed up of Congress' bad governance. We will appeal people to elect sensitive candidates," she said adding that "the Lok Sabha polls would be held during this year itself."