Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his Hindu nationalist party Sunday charted out a strategy for parliamentary elections, which they want to hold within months to cash in on economic growth.
Ahead of an expected announcement of early polls, Vajpayee rallied thousands of supporters in the southern city of Hyderabad, telling them his government's economic performance had proved opposition leader Sonia Gandhi wrong.
"Sonia Gandhi had said that the (government) was dreaming and that our dreams will never be realised," Vajpayee told a crowd waving the green and saffron flags of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
"We have showed her that if we dream, we convert the dreams into reality," he said.
"The whole world knows that India is headed to be an economic power. We are confident India will fulfil its objective to be a developed nation by 2020."
Vajpayee was taking a break from a two-day closed-door BJP session, which party president Venkaiah Naidu said will focus on "advancing elections."
"The party will deliberate and make known its preference but it is the prerogative of the prime minister to take a final decision," Naidu said.
Party spokesman Prakash Javadekar told AFP the meeting would pass resolutions on political and economic issues, as well as last week's South Asian summit in Islamabad where India and Pakistan agreed to restart a stalled dialogue.
The tone for the meeting was set Saturday with party general secretary Pramod Mahajan suggesting elections be held in March, seven months before the deadline.
Another BJP spokesman, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, said the polls should be held by mid-April before the harvest season sets in.
Naidu said the BJP had also "secured the consent" of allies in the coalition of some 20 parties on the timing of parliamentary polls.
The BJP's biggest ally in southern India, the Telegu Desam Party headquartered in Hyderabad, Sunday voiced support for early national polls.
Main opposition leader Sonia Gandhi is under intense pressure to find a new direction for her Congress party after losing three states to the BJP in the December regional polls.
The BJP has seized on the woes of the opposition, with Naidu saying: "The Congress today is a party without unity, clarity or acceptance of the people. We have to take this message down to the people."
The BJP has promised to rake up Gandhi's Italian birth as an election issue. Gandhi is the widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1991.
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