Singh as PM can't be taken for granted, says Lalu

NI Wire

New Delhi

Tue, 21 Apr 2009: 

The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Tuesday asserted his statement on the future United Progressive Alliance (UPA) prime minister candidate by stating that the coalition, if comes to power after the elections, would meet to decide their prime ministerial candidate, and it’s no way the fin on Manmohan Singh.

The incumbent Railway Minister had said all along that Manmohan Singh is not the final choice for prime minister and Singh as prime minister cannot be taken for granted and the candidate for the top post is still not fixed.

After breaking up his regional ties with Congress in Bihar over the issue of seat sharing, both RJD and Congress have been very much critical about each other with conflicting statement on the leadership in UPA.

The alliance first came into the bad light when Lalu accused Congress of being responsible for the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, along with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

'The BJP and Advani were mainly responsible for the demolition but the Congress cannot escape responsibility for its failure to protect it, as the party was in power in Centre,' he said at an election rally in Darbhanga.

A few days ago, the RJD supremo had openly endorsed Manmohan Singh as the prime minister candidate saying: '...We are with the Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. There are certain managers in the Congress who tried to create a rift between us during the seat sharing discussion. However, we still say that Manmohan Singh will be our PM candidate.'

Reacting to Bihar Congress leaders’ demand that the party’s central leadership should sack both Lalu Prasad and Lok Jan Shakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan from as ministers, the RJD chief said: ‘I am not at the mercy of Congress, I'm there because of the people's mandate’.

Earlier last week, another UPA partner, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar had made similar terms by saying that Manmohan Singh was the Congress’ choice for the post of prime minister and that need not mean he was the UPA’s choice too.

With the latest developments, it seems that UPA allies, like the NDA ally in Bihar- Nitish Kumar led Janata Dal United (JDU), are too trying to keep all options “open” to have a share of power at the Centre after the polls.