BJP keeps ally JDU guessing

All seemed well between the BJP and its ally Janata Dal United when NDA convenor Sharad Yadav travelled to Mathura to flag off the Jan Swabhiman Yatra of Rajnath Singh on October 13. JDU general secretary K C Tyagi and BJP vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi had already held a preliminary round of talks for sharing seats in the next Assembly polls in UP.

Two weeks later,a sense of disappointment has crept into the JDU camp after BJP president Nitin Gadkaris declaration at Nagpur on October 28 that the party would not have any alliance ahead of the UP Assembly polls. We are not going to have any pre-poll alliance in UP this time, Gadkari had told reporters,expressing the hope on the basis of in-house surveys that the BJP would cross the 200-mark in the 403-member Assembly,five times over from the current 48.

Echoing this,senior party leader L K Advani said at Thiruvananthapuram on October 29 that the BJP would go it alone in the UP. No,we dont wish to have any alliance in Uttar Pradesh because we know who are the others, he had told reporters.

Tyagi told The Indian Express: Every time,it is me and Naqviji who do the spadework for the final seat-sharing by the two NDA partners in UP. Therefore,we met some three weeks ago and I gave him a list of 53 seats which we tentatively wanted to contest. We havent heard from him since,though we have seen media reports quoting senior BJP leaders to the effect that they will not have any pre-poll alliance in UP.