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02/07/2010
Modi, Varun to campaign in Bihar
New Delhi, July 2 : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Friday gave clear indications that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Lok Sabha member Varun Gandhi will campaign in the coming Bihar elections.
BJP general secretary Ananth Kumar said in Ahmedabad that the party wanted Modi to campaign. "I will come down to Ahmedabad to request Narendra Modi to campaign in Bihar," he said.
Ananth Kumar's remarks came close on the heels of party chief Nitin Gadkari's statement that it was the BJP's right to decide which leaders will campaign and where.
"We have the right to decide which leaders of the BJP should campaign in Bihar. We will decide it at the appropriate time and implement it. It is not for another party to decide," Gadkari told IANS, in a reference to its Bihar coalition partner, the Janata Dal-United (JD-U).
JD-U chief Sharad Yadav had recently suggested that Modi and Varun Gandhi should be excluded from any joint campaign in Bihar in view of their "anti-Muslim image".
The publication of an advertisement during the BJP national executive meet in Patna in June evoked protests from Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, threatening the four-and-half-years-old BJP-JD(U) government in the state.
Gadkari told IANS that "the crisis in the Bihar alliance is almost solved".
Terming it natural that some differences crop up in an electoral alliance, he denied there were differences among the leaders of his party's Bihar unit.
"(I am) hundred percent confident the BJP-JD(U) alliance will return to power in Bihar," he said. "We are contesting on the agenda of development achieved by the Nitish-led government.
"People have horrific memories of the lawlessness and anarchy during the 15-year-long Lalu (Prasad)-Rabri Devi rule. They just do not want those dark days to return," Gadkari said.
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