Sharad blames BJP, says Atal’s NDA was different

New Delhi, June 01: In a significant remark, which could embarrass the BJP further after its poor performance in the recent general elections, the leader of its biggest ally on Sunday questioned the manner in which the
NDA had fought the elections.

Janata Dal (United) president Sharad Yadav said here that though the NDA fought the elections as a group, the “grip was missing”.

Speaking at the end of the party’s two-day national executive meet, Yadav said the BJP, which was leading the alliance, would have to take the maximum blame. “The BJP is the biggest party in the alliance and hence
they are to be blamed more, but they alone cannot be blamed totally,” he said. “The kind of understanding that should have been in the alliance during polls was missing this time, like we had when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the leader. That kind of understanding was somehow missing.”

Putting a question mark on the way the campaign was run by the NDA, he said the alliance was not visible everywhere. “There was an alliance but it was not like the one in the past. The NDA was visible but only at

few places, not at all places. We should have focused on farmers in our election campaign as we had so many leaders from rural background. But we did not go together at many places,” Yadav said.

Without mentioning the Rajnath Singh-Arun Jaitley spat over Sudhanshu Mittal or the fact that many BJP leaders started referring to Gujarat CM Narendra Modi as the next prime ministerial candidate even as the NDA was contesting the elections under L K Advani’s leadership, Yadav said “some internal fights” that had taken place in the alliance had caused losses to the NDA.

–Agencies