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BJP faces uphill task in U.P.
By Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, JAN. 18. The seat-sharing exercise between the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies in Uttar Pradesh is more tension-ridden than anticipated. The leaders of allies have begun approaching the Prime Minister to bring pressure on the State leaders to concede more seats. The battle has intensified with the BJP declaring candidates for 309 seats in the Assembly of 403.
The BJP's complaint is that the allies have an exaggerated notion of their support base, and there was no way the party could concede so many seats (and end up losing them). On the other hand, the allies know that a considerably weakened BJP in U.P. has a high political stake, and it badly needs them. And they intend to exploit this to their advantage.
The president of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, Ajit Singh, met the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, today. The RLD is interested in the Khekra Assembly segment in its Baghpat Lok Sabha constituency, which the BJP is unwilling to relinquish as its sitting MLA, Roop Chaudhary, is the all India general secretary of the Yuva Morcha. So both the BJP and the RLD have declared their candidates for the segment. According to the RLD, Mr. Vajpayee asked BJP State leaders to accommodate the RLD, and another round of talks was on till late tonight to smoothen out differences on some six ``overlapping seats''.
Although yesterday a senior BJP leader indicated that Maneka Gandhi's Shakti Dal would be given ``two or three'' seats, today her party declared its list of candidates for 14 seats.
The Samata Party, the Janata Dal (United) and the Lok Janshakti have decided to wait a day or two before declaring lists. Reports suggest that so far the number of seats offered by the BJP to them was far short of what they expected.
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