Mahesh Usman)
Bharatiya Janata party leader Yogi Adityanath on Friday ruled out any possibility of a coalition with a regional party like the RJD, Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, JD(U) or either of the other three major regional parties. “I am also against coalitions with any party on the ground that it is an alliance of equals, but to suggest to the party faithful that I will support them if they come into the alliance is foolish,” he told reporters in Gwalior town.
The chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, N Chandrababu Naidu, is the only major party leader who has announced such a coalition. He has not done so and his party’s chief minister, Chandrababu Naidu, on Thursday, however, did not rule out a possible cooperation between the JD(U) and RJD in view of the need for “unity” in the state. He said he was not ready to do so at the moment.
“We are not yet ready to discuss any coalitions. I have not decided on coalitions…The only thing I am going to do is work under the people’s mandate and put out my vision. It is on the people to decide for themselves whether they are ready to work with us and work for the development of AP,” said Naidu, an ally of the two regional parties.
Meanwhile, former chief minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, who is allied with the RJD, said he was not in a hurry to bring the Lalu Yadav-RJD coalition together; “There may be enough time for that. The people of Bihar deserve a leader who is determined to do development of state.”
The recent controversy in Bihar following the death of the family patriarch of the state’s ruling political dynasty and the RJD’s insistence on a “grand alliance” with Lalu has taken the political landscape of the state on a slippery slope, triggering fears of instability and even an immediate split. The RJD has now refused to take a decision on a “grand alliance” with the Lalu Yadav-led alliance – something it can do under the new law to decide a bloc without the consent of the other two parties, and in fact, Kumar’s party has also said they will stay out of a “grand alliance”.