Secret survey gives BJP poll fever

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is conducting several secret polls to find out their chances of winning in four states — Delhi, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh — which are likely to go to assembly polls in November.
The result of these studies have revealed that in Delhi, BJP is going to face a tough fight from the Congress and as the election time is coming close, the BJP is losing popular support.The same is the case in Madhya Pradesh.
"We have got several teams conducting secret polls in these four states. These polls are being conducted at a very large scale and after every 15 days we again send a team to these same places to find out the mood swing. The exercise has been on for over eight months," said a BJP cabinet minister.
The BJP leadership is pleased with the findings of their polls in Rajasthan and Chattisgarh. "In Madhya Pradesh, the very first result of these polls showed that the going for us against Digvijay Singh government was tough. But in Delhi, to begin with, we were the winners but slowly in the last few months we have lost our position of advantage," said a senior BJP leader.
BJP leadership is aware that chief minister Sheila Dikshit is quite popular in the city and Khurana needs support from the younger generation of the party leadership to form a government in Delhi. "The last thing we want for Delhi elections is that it becomes a Dikshit versus Khurana fight. Even if people are dissatisfied with the Congress rule in the city, they do not blame Dikshit. She has made her mark as a well-meaning chief minister, who has got lot of enemies in her own party because she wants to do good for people," said a BJP leader.
There is a section of BJP legislators and councillors who believe that Khurana should work closely with a young leader and the choice of chief ministership should be left open till BJP comes to power after the Assembly elections.
"We want a leader like Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley or Vijay Goel to quit from the post of a minister and work full-time for Delhi elections. The entry of these leaders will boost our chances of victory. We also know that if we lose Delhi again it will have a huge psychological impact on our workers all over the country. We have briefed deputy Prime Minister L K Advani on this issue," said a Delhi MLA.
But the good news for Khurana is the infighting in the Congress, which has increased ever since the party workers have tasted power again. Congress, unlike BJP, in Delhi politics has got too many leaders.
"Leaders like Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Subhash Chopra, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar all have got their candidates in all the assembly constituencies and their infighting may cause Congress to lose several seats. Only during elections will we find out whether the party high command empowers Dikshit to choose candidates to fight the elections," said a Congress leader.