Tuesday, April 5 2005 12:37 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Kicking off the silver jubilee celebrations of the party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president L K Advani today (Apr 5, 2005) said that the party would learn the "right lessons" from the "unexpected setback" in the Lok Sabha elections.

The party will forge ahead with even greater resolve as the "myopic" approach of the Congress portends danger for the unity and integrity of the country.

"The Congress party's myopic approach to several potent threats to strengthen our national security, unity and integrity fills me with anxiety about what would happen to India if this approach guided politics and governance for a prolonged period," he said in his presidential remarks at the special session of the National Executive convention to celebrate 25 years of the party's establishment.

The meeting was attended among others by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and is expected to adopt two resolutions. While the political resolution would encapsulate the party's stand on salient issues and developments that have dominated the national scene since the last national executive at Ranchi late last year, the other one focuses on celebrating the silver jubilee with "pride and resolve".

"The operative part of this resolution - namely, the resolve to strengthen the party ideologically, politically and organisationally - has been fleshed out in a separate plan of activities proposed to be taken up during the course of Rajat Jayanti (silver jubilee) year," Advani said.

Asserting that the BJP has succeeded in demolishing the one-party supremacy of the Congress and transforming Indian polity into a bi-polar formation, Advani said, "what is more, the BJP is clearly the stronger of the two poles in terms of ideological distinctiveness, organisational muscle and commitment to the basic values of democracy".

He said if until 1980s "anti-Congressism" was the main axis around which all political developments and strategies of those days revolved, "in sharp contrast, in 2005, we see anti-BJPism as the main axis around which contemporary political events are moving.

"The unexpected setback that we received in the Lok Sabha elections last year does not in the least negate this truth. We shall learn right lessons from this experience and forge ahead with even greater resolve to strengthen the pole that the BJP represents," he said.

The Leader of Opposition described the BJP as the "pole of hope" since a lot of people in India were "indeed looking upto the party with hope and expectation in today's situation, when they feel alarmed by the direction in which the Congress party is trying to take this country."