Ahmedabad: National general secretary of Janata Dal United(JDU) KC Tyagi and Nationalist Congress Party(NCP) leader Praful Patel today addressed a joint press conference in Ahmedabad to announce pre-poll announce of NCP – JDU in Gujarat for upcoming general elections of assembly.

Speaking to media person, Praful Patel said people in Gujarat don’t want BJP and don’t like Congress. We are here to give an alternative of both. BJP won 26 of 26 Lok Sabha seats in Lok Sabha elections in Gujarat. BJP has also been power in Gujarat for last 22 years. The other parties have failed to offer any alternative. Praful Patel said, like any other national party we too want to grow and therefore we have decided to contest Gujarat polls.

When asked, Praful Patel didn’t reply how many seats NCP-JDU alliance will contest in Gujarat polls.

He said, we work on the ground and we can emerge as strong option.

On NCP’s performance in previous Gujarat assembly polls, Praful Patel in reply to a question said, in the last Gujarat general elections we were in alliance with Congress and we were allotted only 9 seats to contest, though we believed we were eligible to contest more seats. We contested 8 seats honestly, but on last moment, Congress fielded its own candidates on the seats already allocated to us. Our experience suggest that Congress is not honest in alliance. We were in alliance with Congress for 15 years to stop BJP, and even were part of Congress-led UPA government in Centre, but in 2014 Maharashtra assembly polls, Congress broke alliance.

When asked whether Congress will be a part of the NCP-JDU alliance, Praful Patel replied we are open to have all like-minded parties to join this alliance, but they will need to have flexible approach while discussing seat allocations.

JDU general secretary KC Tyagi echoed Patel’s feelings and said Congress is bigger party and it should propose to join this alliance. Tyagi said in Bihar, Congress had only 5 seats but JDU when formed alliance, allocated 40 seats to Congress, thanks to which today Congress has 28 seats in Bihar assembly. Similar flexible approach should be in display from Congress side in Gujarat if it intends to join the broad based alliance against BJP.

Tyagi said it is very difficult to defeat BJP single handedly by any one part. There has to be a broad based alliance. If JDU-Congress-RJD alliance was not there in Bihar, victory was not possible there. Similarly in Uttar Pradesh, Congress, BSP and SP jointly have got 95 lakh more votes than BJP which comes to 11%. Senior leaders of NCP, JDU, left etc have been meeting in Delhi to form united opposition alliance against BJP nationwide and we are starting with Gujarat with announcement of this alliance between NCP and JDU.

In reply to questions, Praful Patel denied rumour that he has been assigned the task to break opposition votes in order to favour BJP. He said such rumours are triggered not by BJP but by our own sathidars(Congress).

In today’s media interaction Praful Patel stressed on the issues such as power connection to farmers, proper price to farmers for their agriculture produce, cheaper farm loans to farmers, law and order and unemployment. Patel in reply to a question also favoured some kind of Aayog for Patidars and study of Tamil Nadu model of reservation (above 50%) and special backward class quota. He however clarified that NCP is not the party for one particular segment or class. JDU’s KC Tyagi said his party supports Patidar quota stir and its leader. Tyagi said his party JDU has won as many as 4 assembly seats in Gujarat in the past and its MLA Chhotubhai Vasava has been elected for five terms here, while NCP had won 3-4 seats in the past. JDU MLA Chhotu Vasava and NCP MLA and state party president Jayant Boskey both were present in the press conference.

DeshGujarat