Chinks appear in NDA armoury

Nitish Kumar has left out BJP in the Govt formation process in Bihar.

In an apparent indication of his growing distance with the BJP, JD(U) chief ministerial candidate Nitish Kumar on Saturday left out the former while sending copies of a Common Minimum Programme (CMP) prepared by his party to six non-RJD parties, including the LJP and other independents, inviting them for negotiations.

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"This is purely a JD(U) initiative. I do not think the BJP will put any roadblocks in the process of government formation," Kumar told reporters.

Asked whether the NDA had broken in Bihar as the JD(U) was keeping away BJP from the exercise, Kumar said "right now the JD(U) is concentrating on other anti-RJD parties and will think over the role and position of BJP only after consensus emerged among these parties."

Kumar sent copies of the CMP and letters inviting them for dialogue to the LJP, CPI-ML (Liberation), CPI, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), besides 17 independents to form a government for which the CMP containing finer points of election manifestos of the parties, who went to assembly polls on anti-RJD plank, could form the base.

The JD(U) leader said that the Congress and CPI-M had not been involved in the process because they had already pledged their support to the RJD.