Fernandes, Paswan to steer clear of Vajpayee’s poll rally in Bihar

This has set off speculation in political circles about the real motive. Yadav said he would contact the ministers to find out what was the actual reason for their inability to participate in the rally. The state leadership is now making last-minute efforts to persuade these ministers. The BJP leadership is afraid that an antagonised Samata and JD(U) may create problems.

Not that the state BJP was too keen to invite them in the first place. It had chalked out the programme long back andlaunched a rath yatra as a prelude to the rally. It was in two minds on the issue of extending invitations to these non-BJP leaders. In fact, some leaders had strongly opposed any idea to invite them to an exclusively BJP programme. But finally invitation letters were faxed on December 18 but no effort was made to contact these ministers personally.

In the atmosphere of acrimony that has built up among the NDA partners — BJP, Samata and JD(U) — on the issue of Chief Ministership after the elections, the BJP has been going ahead with its own programme and wasn’t too comfortable with the idea of sharing the dais with the ministers. Even while JD(U) and Samata leaders are busy in formalising their merger and planning a campaign in Bihar for the assembly polls, the BJP has been running ahead of them. It today completed its first round of campaign through a rath yatra. The party has taken out seven rath yatras and toured all the 324 assembly constituencies. Yadav and other BJP leaders emphasise that this isthe formal launching of the election campaign by the party. During the yatra, the main thrust has been to expose the misrule of the Laloo-Rabri regime.