NEW DELHI, 14 April 2005 — Senior Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar has said that any new JD (U) initiative to form a government in Bihar would be made in conjunction with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its pre-election alliance partner.
He asserted that it was foolish to think of a government in Bihar without taking the BJP along. The state is currently under president’s rule as the February-March assembly election produced no clear winning alliance.
He said that his recent move to form a non-BJP government with 120 legislators — two short of a majority — did not yield results but he was not giving up. But Nitish said that no new attempt would be made without taking the BJP into confidence.
Speaking to reporters here, he said that the Lok Jan Shakti Party, the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India- Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML) leaders had rejected his overtures.
The Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leaders, whom he had met, did not respond. Only the 17 independent legislators pledged their support to his move.
“That is why I had declared on April 9 in Patna that my initiative for a non-BJP government in Bihar was over.”
Meanwhile, the BJP yesterday ruled out any change of guard in its Uttar Pradesh unit and affirmed its commitment not to have any alliance with any party in the next assembly elections in the northern state. BJP’s Vice President Kalyan Singh said the party would go it alone in the next elections in the state.
