Wednesday, December 28 2005 15:52 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Embarrassed over the fallout of the sting operations on the party's image, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President L K Advani today (Dec 28, 2005) said it was going through a 'bad patch' and had to reverse the 'distressing descent' of some members.

In an apparent attempt to galvanise the party, he also said that it was not necessary that the next Lok Sabha elections would be held only after five years and if they are held early "BJP should not be found wanting".

Maintaining that the charge that BJP has fallen victim to Congressisation cannot be denied, he said the party has done remarkably good in the past 25 years but was passing through a bad patch in the past 25 weeks.

Advani was delivering his presidential address at the BJP National Convention to mark its silver jubilee a day after Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pointsman Sanjay Joshi resigned as party General Secretary after the surfacing of a VCD that purportedly showed him in a compromising position.

It also comes in the wake of expulsion of six BJP MPs from Parliament after they were caught on camera accepting money for raising questions. The party has been going through convulsions in the last six months ever since Advani's visit to Pakistan where he praised Mohammed Ali Jinnah and faced trouble within.

Advani said "It is said that even the BJP has fallen victim to Congressisation. This is a charge that cannot be denied outright. Perhaps because the party has grown so rapidly, there are elements that have internalised the corrupt ethics of the Congress."

Accusing the Congress of 'fathering' the culture of corruption in the country, he asserted "we have to reverse the distressing descent of some members into the disreputable and corrupt Congress culture. Admittedly, their numbers are miniscule".

At the same time, he said that unless the party resolved to stop this tendency altogether, "we will lose our proud claim to being a party with a difference. The BJP has a glorious past. But a magnificent future awaits us. We must seize the moment. We cannot afford to disappoint our one billion people".

The Convention was being attended by top party leaders, including former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and several former Union Ministers including Jaswant Singh, Murli Manohar Joshi and Venkaiah Naidu and several party chief ministers, including Narendra Modi of Gujarat, who came in for praise from Advani.

Using the occasion to launch a scathing attack on Congress, he demanded the resignation of Sonia Gandhi as Chairperson of NAC in the wake of the Iraqi oil payoffs controversy and accused the ruling party of being 'desperate to hang' former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh "the mere messenger-cum-commission agent, and portray Gandhi as squeaky-clean".