New Delhi, Jan. 22: The BJP seems disinclined to field its Rajya Sabha members who either reportedly expressed a wish to fight the Lok Sabha polls or were being “pressured” by the cadre to have a shot at them.

These Rajya Sabha members included Pramod Mahajan, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.

Highly-placed sources said BJP president M. Venkaiah Naidu — also an Upper House member — gave a subtle cue to his colleagues through his announcement earlier this month that he would never contest the Lok Sabha elections. Naidu declared this from Nellore where he had gone for a family “reunion” during Pongal.

The BJP chief had nursed Nellore during his brief stint as the rural development minister and was estimated to have got projects worth Rs 1,000 crore. The speculation was that either he or his daughter — who oversees welfare schemes in Nellore — would contest the Lok Sabha polls.

For the three days the Naidu family camped in Nellore, it is believed that their ancestral home was besieged by callers from every section — farmers, lawyers, teachers, BJP youth activists and schoolchildren — apparently wanting to know if father or daughter would enter the electoral fray.

On the third day, Naidu ended the suspense, stating neither would. He invoked the anti-dynasty “principle” to justify why his daughter would not. The Congress’ “dynasty” culture has been the BJP’s principal plank of attack.

His daughter issued a separate statement, saying she was interested in politics merely as a “learner” and there were other avenues of “serving” people.

Sources said Jaitley, who was reportedly offered a choice of fighting either from Punjab or Gujarat, Mahajan, who was said to be eyeing Mumbai (north-east), and Naqvi, keen on his former Rampur seat, were told that their services would be continuously required at the headquarters for “overseeing and conducting” the poll campaign.

Mahajan is in charge of the campaign, while Jaitley was tasked to prepare the Vision 2004 document, which will be a reworked version of the NDA’s common agenda of governance. Sushma and Rajnath have another two years or more in the Upper House.

Naidu has put his functionaries and Jaitley in charge of the various states where they will work in tandem with specially constituted core groups to clinch alliances, distribute tickets and plan campaign schedules. A majority of them would be looked after by Naidu, Mahajan and the BJP’s general secretary (organisation), Sanjay Joshi.

The only three central ministers enlisted for the job were L.K. Advani (Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat), Murli Manohar Joshi (Uttar Pradesh) and Jaitley (Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir).

The BJP has started wrapping up its deals with the smaller parties and tying up the loose ends. Sources said with the campaign to focus on Atal Bihari Vajpayee in vintage US presidential style, allies like the Telugu Desam Party, the Akali Dal and the Indian Federal Democratic Party have put in a request for material on the Prime Minister. This is the first time the Desam will project Vajpayee in a big way.

The BJP has not yet decided on what to do with individual MPs who have broken away from their parent parties and joined the BJP. Three of them — Pappu Yadav, Anwar-ul-Haque and Sukhdev Paswan — were from Bihar, Nagmani was from Jharkhand and Mohan Delkar from Daman and Diu.

Sources said their state units would have to be persuaded to allow these members to retain their seats though the BJP may have lost them narrowly in the last elections.

Sources said the Chhattisgarh BJP was being coaxed to “accommodate” Nationalist Congress Party members V.C. Shukla and Arvind Netam. The Haryana unit was being urged to do a rethink on the Indian National Lok Dal against whom it had declared a virtual war.