Rift between BJP, JD(U) on PM candidate widens
The divide between National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal United (JD(U)), on projecting Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as NDA’s prime ministerial candidate has widened, with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) accusing Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of playing vote-bank politics.
In a recent interview, Nitish Kumar had said JD(U) would not accept Modi as NDA’s prime ministerial candidate. He had said, instead, the alliance partners should support a “secular person, acceptable to everybody… someone like former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to be the next prime ministerial candidate of NDA.”
The RSS leadership came out in Modi’s defence, accusing Kumar of making comments only to cater to his vote bank. “Nitish Kumar has said NDA's prime ministerial candidate for 2014 elections should be secular. He has made the statement so that his vote bank remains intact,” RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said, while talking to volunteers of the organisation in Latur.
The rift between the BJP and JD(U) widened after JD(U) tried to remind the BJP leadership the country was not in favour of voting for a “fanatic face” of the NDA. He added the BJP leadership should not forget the two parties had joined hands in 1996, after the BJP had agreed to walk away from the controversial Ram Janambhoomi issue. “People in the BJP who want the party to come to power will have to realise they cannot do it by putting a fanatic face in the front. In 1996, the BJP had realised it couldn’t form a government in the country on the basis of its hardcore Hindutva agenda and, therefore, the NDA was formed after it agreed to drop the three contentious issues of Uniform Civil Code, withdrawal of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir and construction of the Ram temple,” said Shivanand Tiwari, JD(U) general-secretary and a trusted lieutenant of Nitish Kumar.
He added his party would not compromise its secular framework only to remain in power in Bihar. “People had voted for the BJP due to the liberal face of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. But they went away from the party after the Gujarat riots and, instead, voted for the Congress party in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections because people do not accept fanatic politics,” he said.