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Journalism of Courage
JD(U) national spokesperson K C Tyagi on Monday said his party would contest the Uttar Pradesh elections alone if there is no alliance with the BJP. He said while Opposition parties had been finalising alliance partners, the BJP has been taking a lot of time without any assurance of an alliance with the JD(U).
“The BJP is surely our first choice. Our party colleague and Union minister R C P Singh had spoken to Union Home Minister Amit Shah about the alliance in UP. But nothing concrete had transpired so far,” Tyagi told The Indian Express.
He said while Opposition parties, especially Samajwadi Party, had finalised alliances, the BJP has remained “non-committal” on the alliance. “Now we have come to stage of filing of nomination. There has to be clarity among voters. We have long been in alliance talks with the BJP for UP polls,” said the former Rajya Sabha MP.
Asked about party strategy in case an alliance with the BJP does not take shape, Tyagi said: “We will wait for some time. But we will contest on a selected number of seats independently.”
The JD(U) has already submitted a list of desired seats, mostly having sizeable OBC Patel population. Patels are taken as similar to Nitish Kumar’s caste of Kurmis, which along with Kushwaha (both OBCs) have been the core constituency of the JD(U).
Of late, the JD(U) has engaged in a series of political posturings, including its recent warming up to RJD’s support on caste census. Earlier, the party differed with its Bihar alliance partner on the UP government’s proposed two-child norm. The party has been also mounting pressure on the Centre to give Bihar special category status.
