PATNA: With Samajwadi Party and Congress having announced their seat-sharing arrangement in Uttar Pradesh and chances of a Bihar-like grand alliance now shelved, Janata Dal (United) on Monday expressed displeasure about not being part of the SP-led alliance there.
JD(U) national general secretary and Rajya Sabha member KC Tyagi said his party was “disappointed” about the way SP and Congress went ahead with their alliance in UP, RJD national vice-president Raghuvansh Prasad Singh obliquely advised JD(U) not to contest the upcoming Assembly polls in UP against SP-Congress alliance. RJD, which was not keen on contesting the polls in UP, is set to send its leaders, including party supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav, to campaign for the SP-Congress.
“The leaders (of SP and Congress) have disappointed us. Neither could they form a grand alliance nor a proper alliance. We (JD-U) are strongly in favour of unity of secular parties, and in the last Bihar Assembly polls we had cancelled the tickets of as many as 40 of our sitting MLAs for them. We are the pioneers of forming secular alliances,” said Tyagi, who was in Patna to attend JD(U)’s core committee meeting.
“SP has entered into a seat-sharing arrangement with Congress, and it cannot be called an alliance because several important parties, including RLD and JD(U), are not part of this alliance,” he added.
Senior JD(U) leader and former party president Sharad Yadav said his party would decide its “own strategy” in view of the SP-Congress seat-sharing arrangement. “We will soon announce our own strategy. Whatever we decide would be respectful of the culture of consensus (sajha sanskriti) in the country,” said Yadav.
“The main purpose is to keep the communal BJP out of gaining power in UP. Has any other party done as much for secularism as RJD? We will do everything in our power to stop BJP’s ascent to power in UP,” said RJD national vice-president Raghuvansh Prasad Singh.
In an oblique advice to JD(U) to stay out of the UP polls, he added: “JD(U) should ensure that a nationalalternative (to BJP-led NDA) is built and it becomes a national phenomenon. Therefore JD(U) should not do anything (in UP) that creates confusion among the electorate and leads to division of votes”.