The Hindu : BJP rules out tie-up with SP, BSP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 19, 2004

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BJP rules out tie-up with SP, BSP

By Our Special Correspondent

NAGPUR, JAN. 18. With the countdown for an early Lok Sabha election having begun, the Bharatiya Janata Party today rejected any possibility of electoral alliances with Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party led by Mayawati.

At a press conference, Mr. Mahajan, here to attend the BJP's State executive meeting, said: "There is no possibility of an electoral alliance either with Mulayam Singh or Mayawati. The BJP is yet to recover from the trauma of the pulling down of its Government in Uttar Pradesh by Mayawati."

Asked about a tie-up with Om Prakash Chautala's Indian National Lok Dal, Mr. Mahajan said that "even if he does not align with us, he is not going to have an alliance with the Congress in Haryana."

Turning to the alliance between the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, Mr. Mahajan said that if the NCP president, Sharad Pawar, tied up with the Congress with whom he had fallen out on the issue of the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin, the anti-Sonia Gandhi votes would come back to the BJP.

"We did not go to the NCP, it was the NCP which had approached the BJP," he said adding that "the proposed Congress-NCP tie-up will have no effect on our poll prospects in Maharashtra," the BJP leader said.

"If you see the elections in the past, the Congress has always suffered whenever Mr. Pawar has gone close to it."

Referring to the crisis within the NCP, with its leader and former Lok Sabha Speaker, P.A. Sangma, indicating that he could part ways with Mr. Pawar and join the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, Mr. Mahajan said, "all the hands of the NCP `clock' [party symbol] are slowly dropping out and only one hand [that of Mr. Pawar] is moving. In such a case it will be known as Maha-rashtrawadi Congress." — PTI

`No one is untouchable'

New Delhi Jan. 18. Indicating that the Bharatiya Janata Party would not be averse to doing business with parties such as the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party after the Lok Sabha election, the senior BJP leader and Union Human Resource Development Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, today asked the Opposition to name its prime ministerial candidate before the Lok Sabha elections.

Pointing out that the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin would be an election issue, he dismissed her criticism that the BJP's leadership was "old".

It represented "experience and ability," he told PTI in an interview. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance would get a "sufficient majority" to form the next Government, he said but made it clear that whatever was necessary for a stable and credible government would be done in the event of a hung verdict.

"No one is untouchable in an era of coalition. The days of practising political untouchability on one group or the other are over," he said.

Even the Congress was attempting to cobble together a coalition, despite the 1998 Pachmarhi resolution of the party that spoke against alliances.

Maintaining that there were differences among the Opposition parties over naming a leader, he wondered why they were saying the issue would be decided after the elections. "Why are they not deciding now? There is no dearth of leaders. There is Jyoti Basu, Sonia Gandhi and Sharad Pawar."

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