... A cross-observation of the situation party-wise and state-wise should precede the determination of voting preferences. There is no such thing now as political untouchability. We have only to ensure that our voting pattern, which in the present situation has got to be flexible, should not in any case or in any state end up by strengthening or returning to power anti-secular and communal masquerading under a cultural garb ....

We should be able to make serious calculations about election prospects. The question now arises as to who will do it. The requirement suggests the constitution of a small think-tank whose analyses should be conveyed to the electorate from time to time ..

We have to scan the parties and their performance and choose a few parties or fronts for appropriate and studied support. Blind support to any one party throughout the country should be ruled out as impractical and inadvisable. Our allegiance should be claimed by secular parties or parties that may align themselves with them ...

... Our support had better be based on open-eyed pragmatism and hard-boiled national and community interest ..

The number of Muslims in the Lok Sabha has declined alarmingly. The leeway ought to be made up ... (But) it is not head count that we are after.

... We should prepare not a charter of demands ... but a common minimum programme (to) be disseminated widely in order to educate the voters.

A candidate should be supported on the basis of the (secular - editor) party to which he belongs and not on the strength of his individual credentials.

(Source: The Nation and the World, 16 January, 1998)