Congress, Left & TDP line up to woo JD-U

Sharad Yadav-led party all set to sever ties with BJP

The Congress as well as the proponents of the ‘Third Front’ made a beeline for wooing the Janata Dal-United, as the regional party on Saturday appeared set to severe its ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Congress described the JD-U as a “secular and like-minded party”, sending out signals that it might be ready to do business with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s party. Top leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Telugu Desam Party too got in touch with the JD-U president Sharad Yadav on Saturday.

“The JD-U is a like-minded party, which has faith in secularism. It is in alliance with a party with which its ideology does not match,” All India Congress Committee spokesman and Lok Sabha member Bhakta Charan Das told journalists amid reports that the JD-U might decide to snap its ties with the BJP on Sunday.

The Congress has an alliance with the JD-U’s arch rival Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, both in Bihar and at the Centre. But the party, which leads the ruling United Progressive Alliance, sought to reach out to Nitish Kumar, stating that the secular forces could come together any time in the interest of the nation.

“Like-minded secular parties have come together in the past and can come together even in future. Political formation of like-minded forces in the interest of the nation can happen any time,” said Das.

His comment came at a time when the BJP seemed set to project Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the face of its campaign for the next year’s Lok Sabha (LS) polls.

The JD-U is not ready to accept Modi as the NDA’s prime-ministerial candidate, obviously due to his controversial role during the 2002 riots in Gujarat.

The Congress is understood to be expecting a realignment of “secular” political forces in its favour after the BJP formally appointed Modi as the chief of its campaign committee for the 2014 polls. “Both parties (RJD and JD-U) advocate secularism. Today, we are with the RJD.

There is no confusion on it. Tomorrow, if some situation emerges, our leaders will look into that.

It’s not the time for us to comment on it,” he said when asked which of the two parties the Congress would prefer to tie up with before or after the coming LS polls.

The CPM general secretary Prakash Karat and TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu too called up JD-U president Sharad Yadav and is understood to have discussed the evolving political situation and possibility of a “non-Congress and non-BJP” Third Front emerging ahead of the parliamentary polls.