BJD threatens to pull out of NDA

BHUBANESWAR, JULY 30: The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has warned that it would not hesitate to withdraw support to the Vajpayee Government and a...

BHUBANESWAR, JULY 30: The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has warned that it would not hesitate to withdraw support to the Vajpayee Government and ask its Union Ministers to quit if the Centre decides to create Jharkhand without merging Saraikela and Kharsuan districts back with Orissa.

Union Water Resources Minister and BJD Parliamentary Party leader Arjun Charan Sethy told mediapersons that a final decision on the party’s stand would be taken on Tuesday. Since the Bihar State Reorganisation Bill would be taken up for discussion and adopted in Parliament on August 2, the BJD Parliamentary Party would meet in Delhi a day before to decide the future course of action. With Sethy’s ultimatum to the Centre, ties between the BJD and BJP are likely to worsen further in the coming days.

Sethy said all options, including quitting the National Democratic Alliance, would be considered at the meeting. The Vananchal Bill is likely to be passed in the Lok Sabha on August 2. The Minister said that if necessary the BJD will vote against the Bill.

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Sethy said though the BJP MPs from Orissa have been supporting the BJD on inclusion of the two districts back into Orissa, they now seemed to have softened their stand, probably under pressure from the central leadership. “The Orissa BJP MPs’ silence in the Lok Sabha indicates their changed stand,” he said.

Sethy said that ministers from Orissa, accompanied by the BJD and BJP MPs, had met Home Minister L.K. Advani in New Delhi. Advani, however, had told the delegation that the demand could not be considered now as the BJD had not raised the matter during formulation of the National Agenda for Governance (NAG) of the NDA.

The NDA had included creation of Vananchal, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand in the NAG, but the BJD did not mention the demand for inclusion of the two districts then, Advani had told the MPs.

Sethy said the issue was raised by the BJD at an NDA meeting presided over by Prime Minister Vajpayee. Sethi and Union Minister of State for Steel Braja Kishore Tripathy had attended the meeting.

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He said the BJD has moved two amendments to the Vananchal Bill. The first amendment is on sending the Bill to the Joint Select Committee of Parliament and the second on inclusion of Saraikela and Kharsuan in Orissa.