JD(U) says Nitish eligible for PM, lauds Advani for blog

Praising BJP leader L.K. Advani for predicting that the next prime minister could be from neither the Congress nor his own party, the Janata Dal (United) Tuesday said Nitish Kumar is most eligible to become the country's prime minister.

"Advani-ji has a lot of experience.... He has contested several elections and has toured the country extensively. He understands the pulse of the country's politics and the trends. In today's political scenario there is no one like Advaniji," JD-U member of parliament Shivanand Tiwari told a news channel.

Tiwari was reacting to the latest blog by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sunday predicting a non-Congress, non-BJP prime minister heading the government after the 2014 polls. Advani said that there was a likelihood of the next prime minister emerging from neither the Congress nor his own party's ranks.

Asked whether the Bihar chief minister was eligible to become prime minister, Tiwari said: "There is nothing wrong with his eligibility (for the post of the prime minister)."

"People are talking and writing about him as the probable (prime) minister," he added.
Tiwari also said that though Advani's comments would not  demoralise the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the BJP has done little to soothe the people who are fed up with corruption, unemployment and price rise.

"There is price rise, unemployment, corruption, but the BJP is not fighting a sustained battle against these evils... In Uttar Pradesh, Punjab elections, there was anti-incumbency factor which should have benefitted the BJP but it didn't," he added. The JD(U) is a key ally of the BJP-led NDA.

However, another ally Shiv Sena slammed Advani, saying that such comments are akin to conceding defeat "without even entering the boxing ring" and asked the NDA "not to lose heart".

"If Advani has any doubts, he can come to me at Matoshri, (Thackeray's residence in Mumbai) and I will give him a dose of morale and strength," Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray said in an edit in the party mouthpiece Saamna.