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Thakre, Badal and Nitish Kumar to attend BJP's coordination panel meet

Bharatiya Janata Party chief Kushabhau Thakre, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and Samata Party leader Nitish Kumar have been invited to attend tomorrow's coordination committee meeting of the BJP and its partners. The meeting will take stock of the six-week performance of the Vajpayee government. According to sources in the Prime Minister's Office, the committee will also discuss the implementation of the national agenda for governance.

The meeting gains significance in view of the allegations and counter-allegations levelled by some of the BJP partners against each other. There may be a frank discussions on grievances of the partners on certain issues.

All India Anna DMK chief J Jayalalitha will attend the crucial meeting. However, Lok Shakti leader Ramakrishna Hegde is not expected to be there as he has left for Cairo to attend the G-15 summit.

Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy, who has snapped his ties with the BJP-led coalition government, has not been invited, though he is a signatory to the national agenda. Others who will participate in the coordination committee meeting are Samata Party president George Fernandes, Akali Dal leader Surjeet Singh Barnala, Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, Home Minister L K Advani, Shiv Sena MP Madhukar Sarpotdar, MDMK leader Vaiko, PMK leader Dr S Ramadoss, Haryana Chief Minister Bansi Lal, Steel Minister Naveen Patnaik and Petroleum Minister V K Ramamurthy.

The meeting, which was scheduled to begin at 1030 hours, has been postponed by half an hour to enable participants to attend the function at Parliament House organised in Rabindranath Tagore's memory.

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