New Delhi: The party’s revival in Uttar Pradesh has always been on the BJP’s agenda but not much effort had been made in this direction in the past. Now the party has begun a serious bid to re-energise its rank and file and sources said it was seriously thinking about dropping the Ayodhya issue from its core agenda.

On Tuesday, around 150 senior functionaries from Uttar Pradesh held a brainstorming session here with party chief Nitin Gadkari, his predecessor Ranjnath Singh, Murli Manohar Joshi and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. The challenges before the party and the issues to be focussed came up for discussion.

The dominant view at the meet, sources said, was that the Ayodhya issue had lost its charm and outlived its relevance. Majority of the functionaries from the state felt that the BJP should understand the ground realities and instead focus on the “misrule” of the Mayawati government and play the development plank, which has paid dividends in other states.

In the light of the views expressed at the meeting, the party decided to organise an elaborate chintan bhaitak next month to identify the challenges in UP, formulate ways to overcome them, finetune the party machinery, prepare a blueprint for reviving the party before the 2012 Assembly elections and, most importantly, decide the issues it should capitalise on to stay ahead of the curve.

“The temple issue has more or less lost its relevance. It was high time we accepted this fact and focus on issues like development, backwardness of Uttar Pradesh and understand the caste factor, which plays a major role in the state. We should try to capitalise on the anti-incumbency mood in the state and at the Centre,” a senior leader from the state said.

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