No truck with BSP, more parties to join NDA: Rajnath

The BJP is holding negotiations with several parties and and expects at least "two-three" of them to join the NDA alliance soon.

"There is no question," BJP president Rajnath Singh said in an interview when asked about the possibility of his party forging alliance with BSP for boosting its prospects in politically-significant Uttar Pradesh during the next general elections.

To justify BJP's refusal to have a truck with BSP, the former UP Chief Minister suggested that the alliance with that party earlier had been a bad experience.

"Sabse bada sankat us samay paida ho gaya jab hum logon ne BSP ke sath alliance kiya (the BJP faced the worst crisis when we forged alliance with BSP)," Singh said while talking about his party's failure to re-emerge as the key player in the state having the maximum number of 80 Lok Sabha seats in the 543-member House of Parliament.

Insisting that efforts to revive the BJP in UP, particularly at grassroots level, were underway, he said the party will go it alone.

At the national level, the BJP President said two-three parties are expected to join NDA in the near future but refused to disclose these, even when asked whether Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK would be one of these.

There have been indications recently of AIADMK and BJP growing closer to each other.

After the shock defeat in 2004 Lok Sabha elections, NDA saw Telugu Desam and INLD moving away from it, while Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress is keeping it guessing about whether it is in or out of the alliance.

Singh, however, insisted that Trinamool Congress was "still in NDA".

Asked about the scope of new allies accepting L K Advani as the Prime Ministerial candidate considering his hardline Hindutva image, the BJP chief sounded confident, saying there was no problem on this count.

"Advaniji was Union Home Minister for five years. Look at his track record. There was no discrimination. He was fair to all sections of the society. Though he did not appease anybody, he did justice with all," he said, seeking to project Advani as a leader acceptable to all.

On the assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh due later this year, Singh said development will be the main plank for BJP which will also raise issues like price rise and internal security.

Queried whether Hindutva will be on the electioneering agenda, the BJP chief said "it (Hindutva) is an ideology, a thought. It cannot be an election issue." Asked whether the Gujarat model of Hindutva-cum-development plank would be replicated in party-ruled Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh, he was evasive, saying "every state has its own political situation and issues." The possibility of return of expelled firebrand leader Uma Bharti was also discounted by Singh, who said that the party will face the elections with the "present structure".

Incumbent Shivraj Singh Chouhan will be the party's Chief Ministerial candidate in MP, he emphasised.