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RJP to contest 100 seats

Rashtriya Janata Party president and former Gujarat chief minister Shankersinh Vaghela says said his party will contest at least 100 Lok Sabha seats in the coming election.

Vaghela said the party will contest the election as a constituent of the Jan Morcha, formed by Rashtriya Janata Dal leader and former Bihar chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav.

Besides Gujarat, the party will contest 20 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, four in Bihar, two in Delhi, 15 in Maharashtra, six in Andhra Pradesh, two in Haryana, four each in Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, he said. The RJP will also fight elections in southern states.

As for the party's poll plank, Vaghela said the RJP would 'humanise politics'.

He said politics were being 'dehumanised' by the 'politics of withdrawal of support' to governments by 'egoistic' central leadership of political parties. ''These egoistic high commands are responsible for a hung Parliament and not the voters,'' he added.

Foreseeing another hung Parliament after the election, Vaghela said, ''In such an event, my party would call upon the President to take the initiative in forming a national government in which the prime minister would be elected unanimously on the lines of the Lok Sabha speaker.''

The RJP would also strive for the installation of a government based on true federal spirit.

Though the country has a federal constitution, none of the governments that ruled all these years was federal in character as they functioned on the dictates of their parties's central leadership.

Asked about the RJP's ties with the other parties, Vaghela said, ''We might have differences of opinion but do not regard any political party as our enemy.'' He said the RJP will play an important role in the formation of the government at the Centre after the polls.

He criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party, which he left a year ago to form a RJP government with the support of Congress in Gujarat.

Disagreeing that the BJP was gaining ground, he said, ''Congress mein se kachara lekar BJP kya karegi (what the BJP will gain with the garbage collected from the Congress?).

UNI

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