UP polls: Unease in JD-U, BJP
Bihar’s ruling allies JD(U) and BJP have been witnessing an escalating unease ever since the two parties began campaigning separately for the UP Assembly polls and some of their leaders openly issued statements about each other as competitors.
As their campaigns progress in parts of UP bordering Bihar, the two NDA parties, eager to cash in on their combined successes in Bihar, have been at an acute loss for the suitable words that would not contradict their “coalition dharma” yet win the hearts of UP voters. The result — the BJP describing the Bihar turnaround story as the “Bihar model” but the JD(U) uninhibitedly calling it the “Nitish model” in campaign speeches — has caused palpable heartaches in both the parties.
The electoral battle in UP has hardened the positions of some JD(U) leaders, making them insist that the NDA’s Bihar achievements were “unquestionably Nitish Kumar’s achievements” and that it was time the national party stopped treating the JD(U) as an insignificant regional player.
“Why are they (BJP) not talking about the Gujarat model if they are so careful about using the name of a state and not its leader?” asked JD(U) MLC Neeraj Kumar, currently campaigning in UP. JD(U) Bihar president Vashistha Narayan Singh insists that “Nitish model” is the right description for the governance system in Bihar. “The Bihar model is nationally acclaimed as the Nitish model,” he said. BJP leaders in Bihar were particularly upset by JD(U) national president Sharad Yadav’s statements in Balia in UP on Sunday that both the BJP and the Congress were “conspiring to engineer communal riots” in UP. Two days earlier, BJP leaders in Bihar felt angry at statements by Yadav and JD(U) national spokesman Shivanand Tiwary that the national party was not in the reckoning in UP.
JD(U) leaders were shocked when deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP began campaigning in the same constituencies in UP’s Balia and Kushina-gar districts where Nitish Kumar had finished campaigning for JD(U) candidates. On Monday, Mr Kumar sought to soothe the growing unease, saying: “Every party’s leaders go to campaign for polls, and there is nothing much to read into it. If you read much, you will get nothing other than disappointment”.
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