With the Assembly poll results due on Wednesday key parties in Jharkhand are at it again?reaching out to smaller players in case the numbers don?t add up. It is a triangular fight for the state among the Congress-JVM, BJP-JD(U) and the JMM. Everyone is scouting around, already going back on pre-poll utterances to say they are game for new alliances.
The Congress, which had refused to align with the JMM and RJD, has already changed its stance. Both parties have been sounded out and state Congress president Keshav Rao is ready to sew up fresh alliances. ?In case we don?t get majority, we will go for fresh alliances provided our leadership, ideology and commitment to secularism is not compromised,? said Rao.
JVM president Babulal Marandi is against any post-poll alliance. ?This state has suffered a great deal due to the politics of opportunism. I will not make any new alliance. Neither will I let it happen,? Marandi said. But Congress MP and Union minister Subodh Kant Sahay, who has been calling the RJD and JMM ?natural allies?, has already met former minister Sudesh Mahato, president of the All Jharkhand Students? Union (AJSU). No one wants to comment on what was said at the meeting but some AJSU candidates including Mahato?he was once an ally of NDA governments led by Arjun Munda and Marandi?are expected to win.
While RJD chief Lalu Yadav has come out in favour of the Congress, JMM Rajya Sabha MP Hemant Soren, also its candidate from Dumka, is not averse to the idea of a Front. ?We have no reservations on the UPA and NDA. For the development of the state, we can make a strong government with any Front,? he said.
But his father and JMM president Shibu Soren, now extremely critical of the Congress, met BJP?s Arun Jaitley at Ranchi airport recently. He said his party was not averse to joining hands with the BJP. ?The BJP is not untouchable,? said Soren. ?We are not part of the UPA or NDA. Whoever needs us will come to us.?
The BJP is counting on its allies. JD(U)?s Sharad Yadav and Nitish Kumar have sworn to back an NDA government. Munda is learnt to be in touch with Soren and Mahato. ?For a stable government, we have kept all options open. To us, every party is acceptable,? said state BJP president Raghuvar Das.
The CPI(ML) had only one MLA, Binod Singh, in the dissolved Assembly. In the past, he kept a distance from both NDA and UPA. The JMM is said to be actively wooing him. ?If need be, we will try to cobble up a Third Front. Singh is bound to be a partner of such a Front,? said JMM?s Suraj Mandal.