Janata Dal (United) General Secretary Javed Raza tells Aasha Khosa George Fernandes is not in a position to contest the coming elections due to his falling health. Excerpts:
Your selection of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections has left many leaders unhappy.
Much is being made of the party not fielding George Fernandes and Digvijay Singh as candidates in the coming Lok Sabha elections. George sahib is our undisputed leader, but in view of his falling health, we have decided to field him for the first seat of the Rajya Sabha that we get.
After all, a person who has to be told what to speak should not be expected to contest an election. It is unfair. Digvijay Singh remains a Rajya Sabha member till 2010. There is a lot of time to adjust him.
But it seems George Fernandes is angry. Are you making efforts to make him see reason?
Recently, a close friend of his had come from Mumbai. After meeting George sahib, he counseled him that he must not insist on contesting the election. Anyone who is his well-wisher would advise him on the same lines.
What about your Bihar unit? It seems two ministers have resigned from Nitish Kumar’s cabinet in protest.
One of them — Nagmani — has resigned from the party as well. He had contested the last election on the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) ticket. He joined us and then he asked for a ticket for the Legislative Council for his wife.
His another demand was to make his wife a minister. Now, this time he wanted his wife to contest the Lok Sabha election. Enough is enough and we cannot succumb to his blackmail each time. Such people are opportunists and it is better we got rid of him.
What about Nitish Mishra, who is angry but has not quit the party?
Nitish is a sober person. He is the son of Jagannath Mishra, the four-time chief minister of Bihar. Why should each time a blue-blooded politician be given a ticket for contesting election?
If only bloodline is important, where will the ordinary political workers go?
Haven’t we put up for long with the Gandhis, Badals, Chautalas, Lalu Yadavs and Mishras to take care of aspirations of ordinary workers?
Why did the JD(U) and BJP take so long to finalise the seat-sharing agreement?
The delimitation of constituencies has thrown up a major challenge to the political parties. The constituencies have not only changed territorially but even in terms of caste composition and social groups. These are the realities of the Indian scene and we cannot wish them away.
We had a tough time explaining this to the BJP. For instance, in Kishenganj, 80 per cent of voters are Muslims, but the BJP wanted the seat. Still, they have managed to keep the Madhubani seat, which has some 5,50,000 Muslim voters as against 2,50,000 last time. Also, they gave us only two seats in Jharkhand, while we had contested on five seats last election.
How come you agreed on BJP terms.
What to do? We are a smaller party; we had to make the sacrifice for keeping the NDA intact. At times during the negotiations, we had to seriously ask the BJP whether they were actually interested in seeing L K Advani as prime minister or was it a pep-talk. Every seat should matter for them in that case.
You mean people would not vote for the BJP now?
Not really, or how come Shanawaz Hussain got elected as the BJP candidate in the past? The fact is that Nitish Kumar government’s work has made castes irrelevant to some extent in Bihar. The M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) equation forged by Lalu Yadav is a forgotten thing. People are judging JD(U) on the scale of delivery of its promises and not on communal equations.
Will the JD(U) and BJP campaign together in Bihar?
We have the Nitish Kumar government’s work to talk about in the election campaign. However, if individual BJP leaders ask us for help, even in terms of joint campaign, we have no problem with it.
