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Fernandes cautions Sharad, Paswan against criticising BJP

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

Defence Minister George Fernandes today urged his colleagues in the Janata Dal (United) to refrain from airing their views in public on the National Democratic Alliance's recent electoral performance in Bihar.

"The NDA leadership knows there have been shortcomings in the JD(U)-BJP combine's electoral strategy. There should have been better co-ordination, but little purpose is served in apportioning blame for what has happened. There should be soul-searching, but not mudslinging," Fernandes counselled.

JD-U sources said the defence minister had assured the BJP leadership that he had had "a talk" with senior party colleagues like Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan and emphasised that the mutual recriminations should end since they could damage the NDA. "Nobody is above the NDA's disciplinary ambit," he is believed to have warned both of them.

Paswan, who was in Patna yesterday, had blamed the BJP for the combine's poor showing in the election to four parliamentary seats -- Purnea, Khagaria, Bhagalpur and Rajmahal. The NDA won only the Khagaria seat, which went to the JD-U.

While BJP spokesman M Venkaiah Naidu has conceded that lack of co-ordination among the NDA partners led to the setback, other senior BJP politicians have frowned upon Paswan's veiled attack. "If blame has to be apportioned, it will go fifty-fifty between the partners, said vice-president Jana Krishnamurthy. He added that the matter would come up for "microscopic scrutiny" after the party's national executive meeting.

Sushil Kumar Modi, leader of the Opposition in the Bihar assembly, said, "The leaders of the JD-U should not score political points on something in which they have to take equal credit or discredit. The JD-U is the BJP's partner in Bihar, so how can anyone single out our party for the brickbats when the bouquet is to be shared by the two?"

Modi said the BJP's Bihar unit had been "appalled" by the indifference of JD-U seniors like Yadav and Paswan to the election. "They behaved as if they did not have a stake at all," he complained, adding that the duo had indicated at the outset that by virtue of being central ministers, they had very little time for the polls.

Modi is learnt to have complained to the NDA leadership, especially Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, that Yadav and Paswan's grievance of no aircraft being available for them in Bihar was "ridiculous". He emphasised that the combine could have improved its performance in Bhagalpur and Rajmahal if the two had campaigned intensively for its candidates.

The BJP spokesman indicated that the prime minister was unhappy with the developments in Bihar. "Atalji is not amused at the way things have progressed and he will be talking to the senior JD-U leaders soon, especially since assembly polls in the state are to be held in March," Naidu said.

But the BJP leadership, smarting from the Opposition's barbs for losing Purnea, Bhagalpur and Rajmahal, is also understood to have chalked out a strategy to clip the wings of Yadav and Paswan if they continue to not co-operate.

"The two senior JD-U leaders will be given five months to prove their mettle, not as central ministers but in restoring the BJP-JD(U) prestige in Bihar in the assembly polls," said a senior party MP from south Bihar.

Yadav's supporters, however, expressed disdain at Fernandes, himself a JD-U member, doing the BJP leadership's bidding. "Fernandes should not forget that he is one of our own and he should desist from being a gun-carrier of the BJP leaders," they said.

Yadav and Paswan are senior leaders in their own right and nobody should take them for granted, "least of all the defence minister who is acting like an extension of the BJP leadership", they warned.

Significantly, relations between JD-U chief Yadav and Fernandes have worsened since the former admitted Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal into the party.

Fernandes has taken this as a personal affront because the JD-U president took the step without consulting anybody and merely stated that the party's Yadav base would be strengthened.

BJP leaders from Bihar do not discount the possibility of the Sharad Yadav-Fernandes tussle escalating into a full-fledged battle for supremacy.

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