Imphal, April 01: With the underground KYKL and RPF/PLA imposing bans on Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Manipur Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) respectively, poll campaigns of the national political parties for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections have received a severe jolt.

Despite tight security at the Old Lambulane office of the BJP and similar arrangement emphasized for the Congress office located at BT Road, presence of workers of both the parties have been drastically reduced as the UG threats also includes them.

While the BJP office resembled a barren look contrary to expectations of a huge presence especially with the election date round the comer, the morale of Congress party workers is at the lowest ebb as there were ample sign of drooping shoulders normally absent during election time.

It may be noted that the KYKL had reiterated the threat to the BJP yesterday.

On January 29, 2004 the outfit had set March 15 as the deadline for the BJP to either expel Th Chaoba from the party or face the music.

However Chaoba has been granted the BJP ticket to contest from the Inner seat.

The former MP was charged of indulging in anti-KYKL and anti-people activities following which Th Chaoba had even made a public apology through State dailies to condone his crime, if any, as well as appealed to the outfit not to target BJP workers as they are innocent.

On the other-hand, the RPF yesterday accused the Congress led SPF Government for not taking up any developmental programmes in the State and for turning a blind eye to the atrocities and excesses committed by the security personnel.

Subsequently the outfit announced its decision to boycott (he Congress candidates in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

When BJP National Secretary and MLA M Bhorot was contacted, he said that the matter is very serious and declined to make any comments on the threat.

Bhorot, however, informed that senior State BJP leaders today intimated the matter to the party's central leaders including the Prime Minister AB Vajpayee, Home Minister LK Advani, who is also the Dy PM, party vice president and leaders of party in charge of North East region.

The fax message asked for comments and suggestions from the leaders on the prevailing situation, said Bhorot while adding that an emergency meeting of the State unit BJP has been convened tomorrow to deliberate on the KYKL threat.

The RPF threat to the Congress significantly came hours after the party had set the election process on the roll with the filing of nomination papers of Dr Th Meinya and Francis Ngajokpa for the Inner and Outer seats respectively yesterday.

Due to the threat, a massive poll campaign of the Congress scheduled to be held at Lamlai assembly segment today had to be deferred indefinitely, said some Congress activists who also informed that police officials arrived at the party office to review security measures.

As uncertainly prevails and not willing to invite the wrath of the underground organization all election related activities have been shelved for the time being, they expressed.

Amidst the prevailing situation, heavy security arrangements have been made in and around the twin capital districts and security personnel alerted to plug entry routes of underground members at vulnerable locations, confided a senior police official to this reporter.

The Govt has already deployed security personnel at the BJP office, he said adding necessary security steps would be taken up to man the Congress party office.

A security review meeting for the upcoming elections would be conducted very soon, the official said while acknowledging arrival of a Union Home Ministry official to assess the security situation in the State.