While Vajpayee would be contesting from Lucknow, Advani from Gandhinagar, Singh would be fielded from Bulandshehr in western UP, party sources said.

The two-day meeting of the BJP Central Election Committee which began in New Delhi, also decided to field all senior ministers, including Ram Naik from Mumbai, the sources said.

However, the meeting after hectic parleys decided not to field Law and Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley, Agriculture Minister Rajnath Singh, party general secretaries Pramod Mahajan and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi besides party in-charge for UP Kalraj Mishra, all Rajya Sabha members, the sources added.

Vinay Katiyar will be the BJP candidate from Lakhimpur Kheri Lok Sabha constituency while Satyadev Singh will contest from Shahabad and Veena Pandey from Sultanpur in UP, the sources added.

Meanwhile, asserting that the Vajpayee government is truly national in character, Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani yesterday said it had given representation to all sections of political ideology similar to the 1947-51 ministry of Jawaharlal Nehru.

"The NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee is inclusive and truly national in character," Advani said.

"At the same time, the NDA is united by a common objective to make India a developed country by 2020," he told a press conference here on the fifth day of his Bharat Uday Yatra which takes him through Karnataka.

Advani sought to allay fears among Muslims about BJP which, he said, had been created by opponents of the party.