Facing sulking allies, the BJP on Wednesday said alliance politics is all about accommodation and adjustments and there was nothing new about such developments before elections.
“We have completed seat-sharing arrangements with allies in Bihar only last week and we will certainly… Alliance politics is all about accommodation and adjustments. It is true smaller parties like RLSP in Bihar have left us.
“But we are also getting new allies in south India and eastern India. It is something that happens before elections and it is nothing new,” BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav said.
His comments come in the wake of the resentment expressed by BJP ally Apna Patel in Uttar Pradesh which has accused the saffron party of not respecting small allies. The party has two MPs, one of whom is Anupriya Patel, who is Union Minister of State for Health.
The Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP), which has three members in parliament, pulled out of the NDA on December 10 after weeks of seething over the BJP’s seat-sharing deal with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, which left smaller parties with lesser seats to contest in the 2019 national polls.
Read | Former NDA ally chief Upendra Kushwaha joins Bihar grand alliance
RLSP president Upendra Kushwaha, who quit the BJP-led NDA, also joined the grand alliance in Bihar on December 20.
Kushwaha has been upset with the BJP after it asserted that the RLSP would not be given more than two seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, even as it went out of the way to accommodate Kumar by agreeing that the saffron party and the JD(U) would fight an equal number of seats.
The former minister’s joining the UPA is likely to give a boost to the formation of a grand alliance in Bihar to counter the NDA combine of Bhartiya Janata Party-Janata Dal(U)-Lok Janshakti Party.
(With inputs from IANS)