Eye on key seats, Ajit doesn’t blink

PRADEEP KAUSHAL

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 18: Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) president and Agriculture Minister Ajit Singh met Prime Minister Vajpayee today to seek his intervention to end the deadlock over seat-sharing with the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.

Alongside, Shakti Dal led by Union Minister of State Maneka Gandhi announced a list of 14 candidates, to only roll it back within hours, arguing that it was negotiating a deal with the BJP.

Sources said Vajpayee spoke to UP Chief Minister Rajnath Singh and state BJP president Kalraj Mishra on the telephone and asked them to sort out the issue with Ajit Singh.

The Chief Minister told mediapersons later in Lucknow that the ‘‘disagreement was confined to four seats’’. He did not name the seats, but sources said the constituencies are Gokul, Baghra, Bikapur and Khekra.

The BJP had already declared its nominees for Bikapur and Khbekra seats. The party wants to retain the Baghra seat for its sitting MLA Pradeep Baliyan, while it is keen on supporting Sardar Singh of the Loktantrik Congress in Gokul. The RLD president wants the Baghra seat for his party general secretary Anuradha Chaudhry.

Ajit Singh and Kalraj Mishra were closetted with each other in the evening, but failed to reach an agreement. The RLD leader, who had announced a list of 42 constituencies yesterday and promised to name his candidates for them today, however withheld the move. The RLD list contains the names of six constituencies — Bijnor, Kundarki, Hasanpur, Khekra, Morna and Bikapur — for which the BJP had already declared its candidates.

BJP general secretary Pyare Lal Khandelwal, when asked about the RLD list, said that he will not take it seriously unless the party announced its candidates. When asked if there is any deadline for hammering out an agreement, Khandelwal said that the only deadline was the limit for the withdrawals.

Sources in the BJP said that the party plans to ask 15 to 20 candidates to start their election campaign even though it intends to publicly announce their names after a deal was made with the RLD and other parties.