Hajipur (Bihar), April 23 (Inditop) The Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) were only considering Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the office if the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) comes back to power, LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan said here Thursday.
“The only name in our mind for the prime ministerial candidate is Manmohan Singh. In fact, the RJD (of Lalu Prasad) and LJP combine consider only his name for the PM’s post,” he told reporters in his constituency, which went to the polls Thursday.
The LJP chief, who has tied up with the RJD for the elections in Bihar leaving the Congress to go it alone, said his party’s alliance with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was the biggest mistake of his life and would never be repeated.
“The alliance with NDA was the biggest mistake of my life. We will not repeat the mistake again. It was a blunder the first time.”
He added that he wanted the Left to join the “secular parties”. “We have not opposed the Left,” he said. “We want the Left to come with the secular parties.”
Paswan’s comments come after the relationship between the key UPA constituents and the Congress came under considerable strain following Lalu Prasad’s assertion Tuesday that the UPA’s prime ministerial candidate would be decided only after the elections.
This had prompted an umbraged Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee to say in that case there would be a question mark on whether Lalu Prasad would be in the UPA government after the polls.
Paswan had added his bit Wednesday by saying that he would have to rethink his relationship with the Congress if Lalu Prasad was not part of the UPA.
The tensions eased considerably with Lalu Prasad calling up Mukherjee, who blamed the “confusion” on his “broken Hindi”.
rounak