Dream Girl to campaign for BJP in TN

Chennai, Apr 5 (UNI) Hema Malini, the evergreen heroine of Bollywood and popular Telugu actor Krishnama Raju would be the star campaigners for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Tamil Nadu for the May eight Assembly elections in the state.

Announcing this, party General Secretary Bandaru Dattatreya, who is in charge of party affairs in the state, told newspersons here today the party's national leaders - Rajnath Singh, L K Advani, Jaswant Singh, M Venkaiah Naidu, Sushma Swaraj and Pramod Mahajan - would campaign for the BJP and its allies.

Besides the film stars and national leaders, Chief Ministers of Rajastan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand and Deputy Chief Ministers of Karnataka and Bihar would also be roped in for electioneering, Mr Dattattreya said.

The BJP, which is contesting 183 seats, while leaving 51 seats for allies, would release its election manifesto tomorrow and the second list of candidates on April nine. The party had yesterday released a list of 139 candidates.

On the statement of Janta Dal (U) president George Fernandes announcing that the party would contest 60 seats in the state on its own, the BJP leader said there was some communication gap and the two parties will sort it out.

He said the party had allotted ten seats to the All India Ambedkar People's Party and five each to the Janata Party led by Subramaniam Swamy, All India Moovendar Munnetra Kazhagam led by N Sethuraman, Tamizhar Bhoomi, led by former AIADMK Minister K P Krishnan and Dravidar Vizhipunarchi Kazhagam led by P T Kumar.

The party has also accomodated a number of minor parties, which included break-away factions of the Tamil Nadu Indira Congress, recently launched by rebel Congress leader Tindivanam K Ramamurthy.

Except Janata Party and JD(U), all other allies would contest on the BJP's lotus symbol, he clarified.

Stating that there were too many restrictions on wall writings, even in rural areas, Mr Dattatreya urged the Election Commission to relax them, so that smaller parties, which could not afford hi-tech campaign, would be benefit.

He said ruling AIADMK and DMK were utilising TV channels, which favoured them, to the maximum for electioneering, discriminating against other parties. He demanded equal opportunities for other parties in the TV channels.

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