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Paswan willing to back alternative government in Bihar

Senior Janata Dal politician and former railway minister Ram Vilas Paswan today said his party would support the formation of an alternative government in Bihar.

Addressing the press in Madras, Paswan said he was confident that the legislators supporting Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Laloo Prasad Yadav would desert him and support an alternative coalition once his wife Rabri Devi's government is dismissed.

He would not say if his party would support an alternative that included the Bharatiya Janata Party-Samata Party combine. But he did not rule out the possibility of aligning with them in the next election. "Laloo and [Samajwadi Party chief] Mulayam [Singh Yadav] are the two enemies at the state level and the BJP at the Centre," he remarked.

At one stage, Paswan said he was even willing to support an alternative government at the Centre if the two Yadavs were kept out of it.

Asked if he was a candidate for the chief minister's post, Paswan claimed he could have become chief minister in 1989 if he had wanted. (That was the year the Janata Dal swept to power in the state and Laloo Prasad Yadav became chief minister.)

"Who should head an alternative government is not the immediate concern of the Janata Dal," he said, "but to get rid of the Rabri Devi government. If such a government is not possible, elections are the only way out."

Paswan asserted that Bihar was a fit case for invoking Article 356 of the Constitution. The BJP had obtained a mandate to dismiss the government during the general election and should have done it immediately on assuming office, he said. He attributed the delay to the "two minds" in the party and some BJP politicians "hobnobbing" with Laloo Yadav.

He attacked the secular credentials of Laloo Prasad and Mulayam Singh who have formed the National Democratic Front. They have no ideology, he said, blaming Mulayam Singh for sabotaging the 1989 Janata Dal government by projecting Chandra Shekhar as the prime minister.

"After getting the RJD government dismissed, our next objective is to draw up a strategy such that the two leaders will never be able to stage a comeback in Bihar," Paswan said.

UNI

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