Amid speculation over the fate of alliance between the Janata Dal-United and Rashtriya Janata Dal ahead of the crucial Bihar polls, JD-U President Sharad Yadav on Thursday insisted that both the parties will fight the assembly polls in the state together in alliance with the Congress to challenge a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party.
"The unity is bound to happen as it is the need of the hour. The nation needs it. All of us will contest election together. The Congress, JD-U, RJD, the Nationalist Congress Party and others will fight together," Yadav told PTI over the phone from Saharsa in Bihar.
The remarks come a day after a meeting between RJD chief Lalu Prasad's pointsman Bhola Yadav and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is meeting party legislators and parliamentarians to get feedback from them about the situation arising out of the logjam over the tie-up.
Prasad had said in Patna on Wednesday that the reality was different from what was being propagated through "vested interests" and that he is "committed to fighting communal forces".
There has been speculation in the media that the BJP could be egging on Prasad not to go for an alliance with Kumar. There has also been speculation that both the JD-U and RJD have prepared a Plan B to contest the elections separately if the alliance did not materialise.
Scotching the speculation, the JD-U president said, "The unity (of Janata Parivar parties) has already been announced. Now, the announcement will materialise. It will materialise as the country needs it." "I am confident about the unity," he said. He, however, refused to clarify whether he was referring only to the JD-U and RJD contesting together or also to the grand alliance of six parties of erstwhile Janata Parivar. Asked to give a date by which the alliance between the RJD and JD-U will be sealed, Prasad said, "I cannot give a date but unity will happen."
Yadav refused to divulge what transpired in his talks with the RJD chief, saying these things cannot be shared with the media. "I am in touch with everyone. These things cannot be disclosed to media," the JD-U president said when asked what was the attitude of the RJD chief towards the issue of alliance between the two parties for the state elections.
He also refused to comment on the recent war of words between the leaders of the two parties over the issue of projection of Nitish Kumar as the chief ministerial candidate of the alliance. "I do not give statements on statements. But the alliance will happen," he insisted.
RJD Vice President Raghubansh Prasad Singh, whose assertions against declaring Kumar as the chief ministerial candidate of the alliance were retorted strongly by state minister Shyam Rajak, had said the leadership and other issues could be sorted out only when prominent leaders of the two parties talk to them. Singh had also appealed to Congress President Sonia Gandhi to hammer out a solution and give shape to the anti-BJP alliance in Bihar. Meanwhile the Congress, which is keen that the alliance includes both Lalu and Nitish, has already dropped enough hints for its preference for Nitish in case the RJD and JD-U cannot come together.
Amid signs of growing strains between the two parties, Kumar was holding interactions with party leaders, an exercise that will continue till June 17.
There was speculation that the JD-U was trying to explore the possibility of contesting the polls without the RJD after the wrangling.
Singh, who served as union minister in the United Progressive Alliance-I, had been expressing discomfort over Kumar's candidature as a CM nominee.
RJD's opposition to Nitish Kumar's candidature was said to be due to its apprehension of losing the crucial Yadav votes as a majority of the Yadav caste constituting about 14 per cent of the state's population, accuses Kumar of working against their interests during the National Democratic Alliance rule.
Bihar JD-U President Basistha Narayan Singh had, however made it clear that for his party no name other than Nitish Kumar was acceptable.
After being trounced in the Lok Sabha polls by the BJP, the JD-U and RJD had decided to come together in Bihar and a larger unity plan of Janta Parivar's splinter groups including the Samajwadi Party, INLD and Janata Dal-Secular headed by former prime minister H D Deve Gowda was also initiated in December last year.
While assembly elections are due in Bihar this year end, SP-ruled Uttar Pradesh goes to polls in 2017. The BJP has succeeded in making major gains in Lok Sabha polls in these two states.
In Bihar, the NDA under Modi's leadership had won 31 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state in last Lok Sabha polls. In 2010 assembly poll, the BJP had won six of these 10 seats while the RJD had won three and the JD-U bagged one.
The assembly by-poll results laid the foundation for the larger unity.
On April 5 this year, RJD chief Prasad that there should be "no doubt" about the merger of the six parties and that it has "already happened". However, apparently angry over Lalu Prasad's insistence on including ousted Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi in the anti-BJP alliance in Bihar, Kumar had kept away from a crucial merger meeting at Mulayam Singh Yadav's home a fortnight back.
