New Delhi: Bracing for an early Lok Sabha election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has formed a panel of 15 senior leaders to select candidates for the next parliamentary battle that it reckons could be held later this year.

BJP prime ministerial candidate LK Advani will meet members of the panel here Feb 25. Party president Rajnath Singh will chair the meeting, said sources in the party.

"Each member will be assigned to select between 35 and 50 candidates for the next parliamentary election," a party leader said.

"We have completed two processes in respect of the elections - the choice of the prime ministerial candidate and appointing an election management and campaign team," said the leader. "With this we take the third step too."

The BJP leader said, "We expect the elections to take place in the coming winter. Since the delimitation process may take a couple of months, the next round of state elections might take place only in October-November this year and the general elections too may take place either along with it or immediately thereafter."

There is intense speculation in political circles that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) may opt for a snap parliamentary election after summer this year.

And the BJP, which has won most recent state elections, in already in a buoyant mood, confident that it would regain power in New Delhi it dramatically lost in 2004.

Surprisingly, the panel will neither have Rajnath Singh nor Advani, party sources said. Former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has anyway distanced himself from any political activity of the BJP.

It will also not include chief ministers of BJP-ruled states and state BJP chiefs.

The panel's members will include Murli Manohar Joshi, M Venkaiah Naidu, Jaswant Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Yashwant Sinha, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Gopinath Munde, Bal Apte, Ram Lal and Ananth Kumar.

Source : IANS