Exuding confidence that people of Bihar will vote BJP to power in the assembly elections, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today took a jibe at Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad, saying the two "defeated" leaders are trying to stitch up an alliance that will have a lot of contradictions.
"These two defeated, desperate leaders are just trying to cobble together an alliance. There are a lot of contradictions...Whether the alliance is strong or weak... Is it a merger or alliance...People of Bihar will vote for BJP and make it victorious," he told reporters.
Prasad said the two had tried to stop the Narendra Modi jaggernaut in Bihar and out of 40 Lok Sabha seats "one gentlemen came to two (Nitish) and the other (Lalu) got 4".
Asked if BJP will go to the hustings under a chief ministerial candidate or contest with Prime Minister Modi as as the face of its campaign, he said the decision would be taken by the party's Parliamentary Board.
"Somewhere we contest with a chief ministerial candidate, somewhere we don't," he said.
Taking a dig at Lalu and Nitish Kumar, who have failed to resolve their differences over projecting the latter as the proposed alliance's chief ministerial face, Prasad said, "they should decide first who will be the chief minister."
Prasad, Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, dismissed as a "joke" a question about whether he was in contention for chief ministership.
Replying to a question, the BJP leader ruled out any truck with friend-turned-foe Nitish Kumar.
"As far as opening of door for Nitish Kumar is concerned, it is shut with a capital lock....No question of any truck with Nitish Kumar," he said.
With politically sensitive Bihar going to polls later this year, anti-BJP parties are trying to come together to put up a united fight against the saffron party to stop it from wresting the JD(U)-ruled state.
Though the SP, JD(U), RJD and three other off-shoots of the 'Janata Parivar' had announced a merger in April, nothing has moved on the ground owing to sharp differences over seat-sharing and chief ministerial candidate.
