The Hindu : Sharad Joshi joins hands with NDA, Yukta Mookhey in BJP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 06, 2004

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National

Sharad Joshi joins hands with NDA, Yukta Mookhey in BJP

By Our Special Correspondent

Former Miss World Yukta Mookhey shows her membership card after she joined the BJP in New Delhi on Friday.

NEW DELHI, MARCH 5. The erstwhile Shetkari Sangathan leader and now president of the Swatantra Bharat Party, Sharad Joshi, today decided to work with the National Democratic Alliance after extracting a promise from the Bharatiya Janata Party that its election manifesto would include the party's approval for a separate state of Vidarbha to be carved out of Maharashtra.

The general secretary in-charge of elections in the BJP, Pramod Mahajan, presented Mr. Joshi to the press here today. He said the "approval" of his entry to the NDA had been granted by the Prime Minister as chairperson of the Alliance and by George Fernandes, who is the convenor.

Although Mr. Mahajan said that Mr. Joshi was "not interested in contesting the elections," Mr. Joshi himself, when asked by reporters, said categorically that he expected a "three-way seat sharing between the BJP, the Shiv Sena and the Swatantra Bharat Party for the Lok Sabha as well as the Assembly elections (due in Maharashtra later this year)."

Sharad Joshi

When Mr. Mahajan was asked to clarify on this, his response was "what dowry has to be given, leave it to me to decide." He expected Mr. Joshi's party to have considerable "influence" on about 12 Lok Sabha seats. "Those who know Maharashtra politics know Mr. Joshi's strength," he added. Mr. Joshi has led many farmers' agitations in the State.

Mr. Mahajan pointed out that the BJP had passed a resolution in favour of a separate Vidarbha state in its national executive committee meeting in Bhubaneswar in 1993, and therefore stating this again in its manifesto for 2004 would not be a change of stand. However, the Shiv Sena is opposed to the idea, but Mr. Joshi said he was impressed by the "promise" made by the Sena chief, Bal Thackeray, that he would ensure the clearing of the "backlog" of under-development in Vidarbha over the next three years.

"He told me that if that did not happen I myself will raise the demand for a separate Vidarbha," Mr. Joshi explained.

He suggested that his decision to throw in his lot with the NDA was first and foremost based on the separate Vidarbha demand and that he had not received any encouraging response from the Congress on this. However, for the last several years Mr. Joshi had been virtually co-opted into the NDA by induction into an official position and political observers find no surprise in this move.

Immediately after Mr. Joshi, Mr. Mahajan presented the former Miss World, Yukta Mookhey, who took the membership of the party today. "I am too young to contest elections," she said, and added that she expected that working for the BJP would be a "huge learning process." She was attracted to the BJP because she thought the party "has touched so many lives and taken India on the road to progress."

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