New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) key ally Janata Dal (United) on Saturday reiterated its demand for a "secular" prime ministerial candidate and said the announcement of the candidate should be made before the Bihar Assembly elections, sources told CNN-IBN. The JD(U) has made it clear that there will be no question of compromising on the basic principals of the alliance with the BJP, sources added.
The JD(U) will pass a resolution demanding the leader of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) must be a person committed to secularism, which means it continues to be opposed to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the PM candidate, sources further said.
Sources said several state level JD(U) leaders have also expressed unhappiness with the way the BJP has treated the ally. In an effort to reach a compromise, the BJP president Rajnath Singh had spoke to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and JD(U) president Sharad Yadav earlier asking them not to insist on early declaration of the PM candidate and not to oppose a specific name.
Earlier on Saturday, JD(U) leader Shivanand Tiwari said, "Rajnath Singh is right in what he said about our relation with NDA being old and lasting. When we joined BJP, they were considered to be untouchables. Nitish Kumar has said that the PM candidate's name must be announced and that it will be from BJP."
This comes even as a JD(U) poster at the Constitutional Club showed Nitish Kumar leading the NDA chariot without the BJP in it. Having taken his opposition to Modi, a crescendo concern for Nitish Kumar now is whether he should call off his 17 years of marriage with the BJP. JD(U) leaders said they are worried about the impact it would have on the organisational structures and carefully engineered caste equation in Bihar.
Comments
0 comment