Varanasi: Ruling out any change of guard at the Centre, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Venkaiah Naidu on September 18 said the party would contest the next Parliament elections under the leadership of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

"Reports in a section of media in this connection are baseless and there is no question of a leadership change at the Centre," he told reporters.

The BJP would fight the next Lok Sabha elections on the basis of achievements and performance of the Union government, Naidu said.

Asserting that the Vajpayee government would complete its full term, Naidu said the next elections would be held only in 2004. The Opposition's ploy of raising question marks on the stability of the Central government and levelling baseless allegations against it were acts of frustration, he alleged.

The BJP president welcomed the Uttar Pradesh government's refusal to issue a fresh notification in the Ayodhya case.

To a question, Naidu said BJP had never abandoned core issues like Ram temple, abolition of Article 370 and common civil code. "These issues are very much on BJP agenda, but the NDA government at the Centre has its separate agenda," he said.

On the programmes to revamp the party organisation, he said BJP has set a target of winning 300 seats in the Lok Sabha besides gaining power in nine states scheduled to go to polls shortly. In order to apprise the people of the achievements of the Centre and mobilise people's opinion, a "Gaon Chalo Abhiyan" would be launched from September 25.

Five lakh villages would be covered by December 2002.

He said state units of BJP were being restructured. Zonal meetings of the party have already been held in Bangalore, Bhopal, Jaipur and Kolkata. The next one would be in Guwahati.

On the ongoing "gaurav yatra" in Gujarat, he said the yatra, led by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, was getting good response from all sections of society in that state.

Naidu arrived in Varanasi on September 18 morning to address BJP's "jagaran rally".

PTI