The Hindu : BJP, BSP leaders to meet

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 12, 2003

National

National

BJP, BSP leaders to meet

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI FEB. 11. The top leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party will meet here on February 15 to sort out their problems in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP president, Venkaiah Naidu, said here today.

The Deputy Prime Minister, L.K.Advani, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mayawati, Mr. Naidu and BJP's Uttar Pradesh leaders will meet and later they could meet the Prime Minister.

A day ahead of the meeting, the BJP has scheduled its internal meeting with State leaders where Mr. Advani and Mr. Naidu are expected to be present. The BJP Uttar Pradesh president, Vinay Katiyar, the former president, Kalraj Mishra, and Lalji Tandon, Minister, are expected to attend. The general secretary in-charge of U.P., Rajnath Singh, should normally attend the meeting, but there was no firm word from the party on this.

Since the party leadership had let it known that it was interested in the coalition Government in U.P. running smoothly, and that it was looking ahead to an alliance with the BSP for the Lok Sabha elections next year, it was being assumed that Mr. Advani would convey a tough message to the State leaders to stop criticising Ms. Mayawati and her decisions in public.

Coordination mechanism

A coordination mechanism could also be set up through which the senior leaders of both the parties could meet regularly and iron out differences.

The two parties have clashed on several issues — the references to Dr B.R. Ambedkar by Mr. Katiyar were not liked by Ms. Mayawati, BJP leaders in the State expressed resentment over largescale transfer of officials, and more recently the BJP saw an attack on its `thakur' base in the arrest of independent MLA, Raja Bhayya, and his father, Udai Pratap Singh, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA).

Mr. Rajnath Singh was angry that Raja Bhayya, a former Minister in his Government, had now been declared to be not only a criminal but also an anti-national. But Ms. Mayawati has firmly and flatly refused the BJP State leaders' pleas that POTA should not be invoked in the case of Raja Bhayya, and there was little chance of her going back on that.

It is the BJP which would have to backtrack and bear it silently.

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