BJP president Rajnath Singh on Thursday said he was confident of resolving any crisis with the old ally Janata Dal(U) over the issue of PM candidate of the party (and alliance).
While JD(U) president Sharad Yadav quashed reports of “any rift” with the BJP, its general secretary K C Tyagi held forth “on the present dilemmas” facing the party. Tyagi, who had a meeting with Yadav on Thursday on the political resolution to be moved at the two-day national executive of the party, said “the issue of prime ministership had emerged out of the contradictions of the BJP itself”.
“Its small-time leaders make pronouncements on the PM issue on everyday basis. This has created confusion and a sense of uncertainty,” he said. “If they (the BJP) say that it is too early to do it (name PM candidate) as the ruling alliance has not yet announced its PM candidate, we are fine with it. But our concern is that there should not be noises on a daily basis on the party’s PM candidate,” he added.
Another JD(U) leader added that the present situation arose “due to growing support for Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for the PM position”, and the JD(U) leaders reiterated that “the party would walk out of the NDA if Modi is declared the party’s (BJP’s) PM candidate”.
The JD(U) runs a coalition government with the junior partner, the BJP, in Bihar and its Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, an old rival of Modi, counts himself as a possible PM contender. For the record, however, Nitish has maintained that he is not interested in the top job, and that the PM candidate of the mainline Opposition would be from the largest party of the bloc -- the BJP -- but she/he must also have “impeccable secular credentials”.
By his classification, he has thus decreed that if Modi were to be made the BJP’s PM candidate, the JD(U) would part ways with the BJP.