Venkaiah girds up loins for MP polls

Bhopal, Apr 26 (UNI) Even as Madhya Pradesh faces a poll year, former Bharatiya Janata Party president M Venkaiah Naidu today said that the BJP wished to enter the electoral arena with a strategy that would be the basis for determining what could be done for the masses at the levels of the party organisation and government.

''The state's senior leaders, former chief ministers, party office-bearers, ministers, MPs, MLAs, the Chief Minister and state unit president will be consulted,'' Mr Naidu -- who is the BJP's State Incharge (Elections) -- told reporters here after a meeting of the poll cell.

Claiming that Madhya Pradesh's BJP government had done better work for the common man's welfare, he added that a BJP wave was being witnessed in Karnataka that is heading for the hustings.

''The polls in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh are like a semifinal to the general elections,'' Mr Naidu said while supporting Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's decision to go on a 24-hour fast here on April 30 in protest against the Centre's ''stepmotherly'' treatment to this state.

He alleged that the Centre was discriminating in allocation of coal, power, foodgrain and drought relief.

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