Bihar trio building base in UP

Lucknow, March 3
THEY ARE bitter rivals in their stronghold Bihar, but in Uttar Pradesh, where the support base of their party is insignificant, the trio Lalu Prasad Yadav, RamVilas Paswan and Nitish Kumar are working for a common aim- to spread the support base of their party and to check Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) from returning to power.
While Lalu’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) plans to contest the Vidhan Sabha election under the umbrella of Jan Morcha alliance, Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (U) is most likely to ally with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The JD (U) has already announced that Apna Dal will be part of the alliance.
The LJP took lead over the RJD and JD (U) with organising a rally at Ambedkar Maidan. Along with the national president of LJP Ramvilas Paswan, national president of Jan Morcha Raj Babbar and former Prime Minister VP Singh also addressed the meeting.
Since LJP plans to make inroads into the Dalit vote bank, Paswan targeted the BSP and its leader Mayawati. He said the people of UP had given a chance to the BJP, the SP and the BSP. But all the three parties failed to fulfill their aspirations. He called upon the people to give the LJP and Jan Morcha a chance.
LJP leaders said the party had identified the seats on which its candidate could secure victory and the names of the candidates would be announced soon.
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav plans to pay back Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav in the same coin as the latter did in the Bihar Vidhan Sabha election. Its main target is the SP. It plans to field candidates on maximum number of seats to cut into the vote bank of the Samajwadi Party.
An RJD leader said the SP had no base in Bihar, yet it fielded candidates over 100 seats. Though merely two candidates won the election, the candidates fielded by the SP eroded the vote bank of the RJD. Lalu had said that division of the secular votes led to the defeat of his party and called Mulayam a vote ‘katwa’ (one who was cutting into RJD vote).
Talking to Hindustan Times, RJD leaders said a meeting of the state executive committee leaders would be held in New Delhi on March 6 to finalise the list of candidates. The RJD supremo would launch the campaign of the party during the first phase of the Vidhan Sabha election, he said.
Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar and national president Sharad Yadav will lead the JD (U) campaign. Though the party has planned to contest the election in alliance with Apna Dal of Sone Lal Patel, at the same time talks for seat sharing are continuing with the BJP.