Reacting to a rediff.com report that former Bharatiya Janata Party president L K Advani failed to show up at a public meeting in Moradabad, a senior party leader has said on Monday that during elections, this sort of thing should not be given much importance.

"When you are chalking out details of election tours of leaders, sometimes logistics have to be taken into consideration. In such a huge exercise it is possible to have small error here or there. Hence too much importance should not be given if a senior leader could not make it to rally," a senior party functionary from Uttar Pradesh told rediff.com on Monday morning.

According to our correspondent, the state police broke the story to newsmen that Advani would not be addressing the rally on Sunday evening. No details were offered though huge advertisements had been printed in local newspapers announcing Sunday's rally.

"The third phase is going to be important for us. Polling will be held to 58 seats. Last time we did badly because we had to contest against Kalyan Singh's party. Now he is leading the BJP campaign and hence we hope that the number of seats will rise from 11 to 23 seats. This will be a big boost to the party," Siddharth Nath Singh said in New Delhi.