The Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttaranchal in 2007 will provide a testing ground for the BJP’s preparations for the 2009 general elections.

As party president Rajnath Singh says “the UP elections will be the most important”. Top party leaders at the recent national executive and the national council meetings in Lucknow stressed how crucial the UP polls were, because the party will be trying to make its mark in a battle where the Samajwadi Party and the BSP are seen to be the main contestants.

The BJP is seeing the UP polls as a “national election”. Singh agrees, saying that apart from bijli-sadak-pani the party’s stand on national issues will be tested in the state. And this time Ramjanmabhoomi will not be an election issue.

Giving an indication about the campaign strategy, a top party leader says, “We have pursued an aggressive nationalistic policy. We intend to make that an important part of our campaign.”

The confidence that the strategy will work follows BJP’s belief that it had been able to make significant gains—at least in the mindspace—by taking hardline positions on the Indo-US nuclear deal, the government’s “soft approach” to terrorism and the Sachar Committee’s findings. “The government has been giving us issues almost on a daily basis,” the BJP leader said.

But, there could be pitfalls as well. The success of the poll campaign in northern India will be key for future planning, not only for 2009 but also another round of Assembly polls—including in the all-important state of Gujarat. “If we don’t succeed now, our entire strategy for the future will falter, our momentum will falter,” says the BJP leader.

The party leadership is aware that the other parties are likely to pick on the fault lines within the party in the run-up to the polls. One of those will be the leadership issue. The party knows that recent comments in this regard by Murli Manohar Joshi and Venkaiah Naidu have not helped, but in a conscious move there is now consensus within that the leadership issue will be decided when the time is right.

There is optimism for now. For one, says BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley, on the economic side the UPA has a high taxation regime. When it tries to usher in reforms, it is forced to back down by the Left. “The UPA is merely pursuing Third Front policies. What we are witnessing is a schizophrenic character of the economy. This is entrepreneur-driven growth, not policy driven.”

Given this assessment he says: “Since the next elections are two-and-a-half years away, this is the time to position ourselves. We are in a better position now than in 2004.”