Monday, April 4 2005 09:01 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Patna: Janata Dal United (JDU) leader Nitish Kumar's fledgling efforts to form a Government in Bihar yesterday (Apr 3, 2005) appeared to have come unstuck with Lok Janashakti Party (LJP) insisting on his snapping ties with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) while two senior JDU leaders asserting the saffron party cannot be kept out of attempts to end the political logjam.

After sending letters to 17 Independent MLAs and six parties outside Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and BJP brackets, Kumar held talks with BJP president L K Advani on Saturday night (Apr 2, 2005) and apprised him of the exercise.

Declining to divulge what transpired between him and Advani, Kumar said that along with 48 MLAs from the six parties and the Independents, JDU, which alone has 55 MLAs could reach a total of 120, two short of a simple majority in the 243-member Bihar Assembly.

The six parties are Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP with 29 MLAs, Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist (CPIML) with 7, Samajwadi Party (SP) with 4, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Communist Party of India (CPI) with 3 each and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) with 2.

Kumar is also understood to have held talks with Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav to seek support of his four MLAs.

However, LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan, who met Governor Buta Singh yesterday, dashed Kumar's hopes by reiterating his anti-RJD and anti-BJP chant and made it clear that the party would help form Government in the State on its own terms.

On the other hand, JDU leader and National Democratic Alliance (NDA) convenor George Fernandes told reporters that no Government could be formed on the conditions set by Paswan and efforts towards that cannot move ahead by keeping BJP out of the process and aligning with LJP.

Fernandes' party colleague Sharad Yadav too envisaged a role for BJP in ending the political logjam in Bihar saying, "We have to find out in what form BJP's cooperation can be taken to help form a stable Government in the State."

The CPI, whose three MLAs have been included by the two in Kumar's scheme of things, ridiculed the move saying it appears to be an "opportunistic gathering hungry to come to power.

"If Paswan thinks he can sail in two boats then he can try the experiment. As far as Nitish Kumar is concerned, he is still with BJP and supports it," CPI general secretary A B Bardhan told reporters in Chandigarh.

"We will not give any letter of support to him," he said about Kumar.