The Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) on Sunday indicated that it would fight the Bihar Assembly elections on its own and not under the leadership of JD(U) president and chief minister Nitish Kumar.
An LJP parliamentary board meeting chaired by its president Chirag Paswan instead passed a resolution in favour of an alliance with the BJP and said its MLAs would work to strengthen the hand of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The BJP has already announced that the NDA will fight the polls under the leadership of Nitish Kumar. The BJP central election committee is meeting later in the evening to finalise the party's candidates for the three-phase Assembly election, which begins from October 28.
Nitish Kumar File picture
The LJP resolution makes it clear as of now that part would fight the Bihar elections on its own.
"Due to the ideological differences at the state-level with the JDU, the LJP has decided to fight the Assembly elections separately," LJP's Abdul Khaliq said in a statement, ndtv.com reported.
"There can be difference of ideologies on many seats with the JDU... voters should be able to decide who they want as their candidate. The LJP wants to implement the Bihar vision document and the two parties have not been able to reach a consensus on it," the official statement underlined, stressing on the party's motto- 'Bihar first-Bihari first'.
Suggesting that ties with the BJP remained intact even as it parts ways with Nitish Kumar's JDU, the party stressed: "However, we have a strong alliance with the BJP and even in Bihar, we want to continue this collaboration. There is no sourness in our relations. After the state elections, all the candidates who win will form a BJP-LJP government and follow the path of progress shown by Prime Minister Narendra Modi."
Several party leaders attended the meeting including Veena Devi, Chandan Singh, Surajbhan Singh, Raju Tiwari, Prince Raj, Kali Pandey, and Abdul Khalid.
The meeting, which was to be held on Saturday, was postponed after Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Chirag’s father, was hospitalised. He underwent a heart surgery last night at a hospital in Delhi, Paswan Junior said in a tweet on Sunday morning.
Prime Minster Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Home Minister Amit Shah called up Chirag Paswan to enquire about his father's health and told him that once his father recovers, "he will be proud of how well his son looked after him".
