The party apparently expects the Kargil conflict to end within the next week. With revision of electoral roles by the Election Commission to be completed by July 21, an announcement of the election schedule is expected by the end of this month.

Since most of the BJP's allies are regional parties, it has asked its state units to complete seat-sharing and seat adjustments before the next meeting of election committee, likely to be held early next month.

A meeting of the BJP and its allies -- National Democratic Alliance -- too is expected to be convened early next month to discuss some amendments in their joint manifesto, the National Agendafor Governance. This meeting will also finalise seat-sharing.

In a significant move, the BJP has persuaded its ally, the Shiv Sena, to hold Assembly elections in Maharashtra along with the Lok Sabha polls to reap the benefit of a three-way division of votes between the Congress, Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance and the Shiv Sena-BJP combine. The Shiv Sena earlier wanted Assembly polls to be held in March next year on schedule. Besides Maharashtra, other states scheduled to have simultaneous Assembly polls are Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Sikkim.

The BJP hopes to have a tacit seat adjustment with the ruling Telugu Desam in Andhra. It expects a political realignment in Karnataka as well.Party spokesman M Venkaiah Naidu told newspersons today that the election committee had left the decision to select two candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections in Gujarat on Thakre. The names will be announced only on Momday since the panel of candidates could not be sent in time by the stateunit, he said. However, the party would not support anybody in West Bengal and Goa.

Asked whether Kargil would feature on their election manifesto, Naidu said, ``we don't want to make it an issue but would certainly reply to charges levelled against us by the Opposition''.