List of BJP candidates in TN to be released on Ram Navami day

Chennai, Mar 27 (UNI) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will release the list of candidates for the May eight Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu on the occasion of 'Rama Navami,' on April seven or eight, senior party leader M Venkaiah Naidu said today.

Talking to newspersons here, he said the party had decided to accomodate Janata Party led by Dr Subramanian Swamy and rope in some of the minor caste-based and social organisation.

He said the decision to take the Janata Party into the BJP fold had been taken at the policy level and the party's national election committee would take a final decision.

As many as 47 minor parties and organisations have offered to support the BJP and a four-member committee had been formed to assess their strength and find out their interests, Mr Naidu said.

He said the party, which had interviewed 1018 aspirants, would meet here on April two to recommend the list of candidates. The central election committee on April four, would finalise the list, he said adding ''there are candidates for 234 seats''.

Mr Naidu said by going for it alone, the party had taken a big challenge in this election. As people of the state had tried two Dravidian parties and seen their politics of ''hatred and vengeance'' the BJP, in a humble way, would say there was an ''alternative'' to the two parties. ''This is a big challenge taken up by the BJP,'' Mr Naidu said.

Refusing allegations that the party was being marginalised in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka as the major parties refused to accomodate it, Mr Naidu said there was no question of major parties accomodating the BJP. ''It is the party's decision to go it alone.

If the Congress wanted to provide Kamaraj rule, we want to provide Ramaraj Rule,'' he said.

The party had proposed to mobilise Rs two crore from the district units to meet the election expenditure, the BJP leader added.

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