Patna, June 23: The BJP today claimed everything was fine within the NDA to play down the rumblings, a day after its alliance partner Rashtriya Lok Samata Party demanded projection of its leader Upendra Kushwaha as the chief ministerial face.
Senior BJP leader and former minister Nand Kishore Yadav said: "Our political opponents are trying to make an issue out of nothing. The NDA constituents will sit together after the State Legislative Council polls and all the issues, including the chief ministerial face and seat-sharing, would be discussed threadbare."
Yadav made the remarks a day after Kushwaha backed his party's resolution to make him the chief ministerial candidate of the NDA.
Even RLSP came up with a placatory note on the issue today. The party's state unit president and Jehanabad MP, Arun Kumar, maintained that there was no problem in the NDA fold on the issue of the chief ministerial face. "Every party wants the chief minister from its own fold. What is wrong if our party passed a similar resolution? It does not mean that we are making any demand. It is just a suggestion, which the NDA constituents could either accept or reject," he told The Telegraph.
The words of the Jehanabad MP would be music to the ears of the BJP leaders because two other constituents of the NDA - Ram Vilas Paswan-led LJP and Jitan Ram Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha Secular (HAMS) - have already said they were not contenders for the post of chief minister and would go by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision on it.
RLSP MP Arun said all the NDA constituents were under Modi's leadership and there should be no confusion in the minds of the political opponents about things like discord or something similar in the NDA fold. Responding to a query about the party's stand on seat share, Arun denied that RLSP was adamant on the number of seats it wanted to contest. "Such things would be discussed once we sit together," he said.
The RLSP had asserted yesterday that the BJP should contest 102 seats, the number of seats it used to contest when it had JDU as its alliance partner. The party had also maintained that Paswan-led LJP should be given 74 seats and RLSP 67.
A day on, Arun termed this statement just a suggestion and nothing else. Amid the placatory note from the RLSP, the BJP insiders revealed that the party would adopt a flexible approach during the seat-sharing talks. It might not stick to its earlier plan of contesting at least 160 seats, leaving the rest for the alliance partners LJP, RLSP and HAMS. "Our main goal is to defeat Nitish Kumar," a senior BJP leader said requesting anonymity.
