Saturday, January 8 2005 14:17 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Patna: With cracks appearing between the Congress and RJD (Rashtriya Janata Dal) over seat-sharing in Jharkhand, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) president Ramvilas Paswan today (Jan 8, 2005) renewed his call to the Congress and JDU (Janata Dal-United) to join forces with his party for next month's Bihar Assembly elections.

"The electorate of Bihar yearn for a change and for this they want Congress, LJP and JDU to unitedly fight the Assembly elections," he said and offered the post of Chief Minister to the Congress or JDU if the alliance mooted by him emerged victorious.

"I have no desire to become Chief Minister and want to contribute my bit to restore social and communal harmony in Bihar and bringing it back on the path of development," he told reporters.

Rejecting outright JDU leader Nitish Kumar's overtures to him to return to the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) fold, Paswan said, "The JDU leaders fail to realise that my joining the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party)-led NDA would re-consolidate the Muslim-Yadav (M-Y) vote-bank of the RJD and in that case defeating RJD in the polls would become very difficult if not impossible."

The Union Minister of Steel claimed the M-Y combination, which had enabled Laloo Prasad's party to remain in power for 15 years, had been broken with a significant chunk of the minorities shifting their loyalty to LJP.

"This is a golden opportunity for the Congress to get rid of Laloo and join hands with LJP," he said.

Paswan even went to the extent of offering the Congress to lead the electoral fight against RJD in Bihar and said, "I am prepared to make any sacrifice to bring an end to the RJD misrule."

The LJP leader said that he had spoken to Nitish Kumar this morning asking him to take an objective view of the ground realities, which indicated a "secular versus secular" fight in the elections.

"The BJP has been rejected by the secular voters of Bihar and the JD-U, which has maintained its secular credentials despite its relations with BJP, will be accepted by the voters," he said.

Paswan termed as "unreasonable" the RJD's displeasure over yesterday's seat-sharing arrangement between the Congress and JMM (Jharkhand Mukti Morcha) as part of which the former would contest 33 seats and later 35 in Jharkhand leaving the rest 13 for RJD and Left parties.

"The Congress could have had the same grudge against RJD when despite being the largest national party it was offered only four seats in Bihar in the last Lok Sabha elections," he said.

Voicing strong displeasure over "one-sided" seat-sharing arrangement between JMM and Congress, the RJD had announced to contest 25 seats in Jharkhand.