BJP may get five seats in TN

Former Tamil Nadu chief minister and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham supremo J Jayalalitha has reportedly offered five Lok Sabha seats to the Bharatiya Janata Party in her state.

Revealing this, a senior BJP leader said the party's three-day national executive meeting, which concluded on Sunday, discussed the optimistic reports presented by the state unit chiefs. The reports said the party and its allies would get 290 seats in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP expects a landslide in Maharashtra, a clean sweep in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh and a marked improvement in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The party's Uttar Pradesh unit told the national executive that it would get more than 60 seats even if the state witnesses triangular contests with Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party and Kanshi Ram's Bahujan Samaj Party opposing each other.

In Orissa, the BJP and its new-found ally Biju Janata Dal hope to get at least half of the 21 seats.

As for Karnataka, the party hopes to rope in former Karnataka chief minister Ramakrishna Hegde, said a national executive member from the state. The party hopes to win 12 seats on their own in the state.

''As Hegde is a spentforce in Karnataka, we won't agree to his terms and leave the state in his hands,'' said the leader.

Besides statewise stock-taking, the national executive passed a political resolution, condemning the Justice Milap Chand Jain Commission interim report and the way Congress used it to pull down the United Front government.

The resolution was equally critical of the Left parties for seeking ''power without accountability, for which they were willing to collaborate with anybody and compromise on anything''.

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