By Faraz Ahmad,

New Delhi, March 24 (IANS) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), struck by the sudden sickness of its star campaigner and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has broad-based Sunday's campaign launch for the Uttar Pradesh polls.

The BJP had announced that on March 25 Vajpayee, accompanied by BJP's chief ministerial candidate Kalyan Singh, would address a public meeting in Kanpur to launch its campaign. The state goes to polls from April 7-May 8.

To balance the loss of Vajpayee, party president Rajnath Singh has now tried to incorporate many more leaders than initially announced by state BJP in charge M. Venkaiah Naidu.

The BJP had announced simultaneous public meetings from three different towns on the same day and at the same time.

Besides the meeting in Kanpur, opposition leader in parliament L.K. Advani and state leader Lalji Tandon were to address another public meeting at Agra the same day. The third simultaneous meeting was to be addressed by Rajnath Singh and state BJP president Kesrinath Tripathi in Jhansi.

In addition, workers' conventions, led by other important party leaders, were also to be held simultaneously in six towns.

So BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad had been entrusted with Meerut. Agra had gone to Om Prakash Mathur, Varanasi to Ananth Kumar, Kanpur to Tanwar Chand Gahlot, Lucknow to Saudan Singh and Gorakhpur to Gopinath Munde.

But on Friday, the party spokesman extended this to 11 towns and included Janata Dal-United president Sharad Yadav and Apna Dal president Sone Lal Patel - part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the BJP - as well as almost all the other senior leaders who were left out in the first round of "selection".

The later incorporations include Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Murli Manohar Joshi, Jaswant Singh, Kalraj Mishra, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Venkaiah Naidu.

BJP spokesman Prakash Jawadekar said the BJP would launch its campaign from 11 centres across the state March 25. There will be public meetings in Kanpur, Agra and Jhansi and workers rallies at Meerut, Varanasi, Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Muradabad, Saharanpur, Allahabad and Aligarh.

He said Rajnath Singh with Sharad Yadav and Kesarinath Tripathi would address public meetings in Jhansi. L.K. Advani and Lalji Tandon would address Agra rally. Kalyan Singh, Sushma Swaraj and Sonelal Patel will speak at Kanpur.

For the rest of the campaign, Joshi will launch it from Meerut, Venkaiah Naidu will address a worker's rally in Varanasi. Jaswant Singh will herald the campaign from Saharanpur and Kalraj Mishra from Aligarh. While Anant Kumar will address the Allahabad rally, Arun Jaitley will guide Lucknow workers. M.A. Naqvi and Vinay Katiyar will address the gathering from Ghaziabad and Muradabad respectively.

Gorakhpur and Munde have been excluded from the revised list. The omission is important for two reasons.

BJP's volatile MP Yogi Adityanath, who was arrested recently for causing communal disturbances in eastern Uttar Pradesh, represents Gorakhpur for the party. And he resigned from BJP's National Executive after the announcement of candidates protesting against denial of ticket to 32 of his followers.

Besides, Munde has been under cloud since his brother-in-law Pramod Mahajan was shot dead by his younger brother Pravin Mahajan last year and later when his nephew Rahul Mahajan was admitted to Apollo Hospital while Pramod's secretary Vivek Moitra died allegedly after consuming psychotropic drugs.

As luck would have it, the trial in the Mahajan murder case has just begun and the whole issue will be in focus. Keeping Munde out of the campaign could possibly give the impression that the BJP is maintaining a distance from that rather distasteful past, said a party insider.

But the fact remains that Vajpayee's sudden sickness has deprived the BJP of a major campaign scoring point.

Kalyan Singh, a former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, had to relinquish chief ministership because of Vajpayee and Rajnath Singh's reported hostility towards him.

Later he left the BJP, formed his own party, aligned with Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party and had his representatives in that government. He then withdrew support to that government and rejoined the BJP.

The coming together of Vajpayee and Kalyan Singh was to send a strong signal to BJP voters that everything is fine in the "parivar" (family) now. The illness deprives the BJP of this advantage.

To compensate for it the BJP has tried to include many more leaders to convey the impression of "fraternal unity", said a political observer.