Elections 2014: No permanent enemies in politics, says AIADMK; BJD offers 'conditional support'
Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik, BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa (Photo: PTI/DC)
Mumbai: Parties have started dialling BJP after Monday's exit polls. An AIADMK MP has said there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics.
A senior BJD leader on Wednesday also indicated conditional support by his party to the NDA.
"Keeping in view the opinion of the whole country and the state's interest, there should be no problem in providing conditional support to NDA to form government at the Centre," BJD's chief whip Pravat Tripathy told a news channel.
The party would support NDA if BJP leaders promise to accord special category status to Odisha, a long-standing demand of the state, he said adding BJD as a regional party should keep in mind the interest of the state.
This apart, BJD would also like to get a clear assurance from the Centre that no part of Odisha would be affected by implementation of the Polavaram multi-purpose project in Andhra Pradesh, said another BJD leader.
BJD chief and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik however remains non-committal. “No talks at all. We have not discussed anything. We havenot thought of it yet. Let us wait till the results,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Tamil Nadu story also looks interesting.
While campaigning for the general elections, Modi and Jayalalithaa have sparred but the tone of the BJP leader's attacks was far more gentle than his acerbic duels with Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal.
And as voting ended in the nine-phase election on Monday, Modi also reached out in a blog post to other political parties suggesting that the "heat and dust" of a hard-fought campaign be now put behind. "This is the right time to look ahead. It is a time to connect with each other... Let us place people over politics, hope over despair, healing over hurting, inclusion over exclusion and development over divisiveness," he wrote.
Modi’s close aide, Amit Shah, said on Tuesday the party would accept support from all quarters, “even from a single MP”. When asked if he would now be shifting to New Delhi, Mr Shah said: “I will do whatever the party asks me to do.”
If the BJP-led NDA gets a clear majority in the Lok Sabha on May 16, the swearing-in-ceremony could be held by May 20. The party also plans to hold a massive celebration in Varanasi if Mr Modi becmes PM, sources said.
As almost all exit polls has predicted an NDA government at the Centre, consultations have begun in party circles over the role of BJP patriarch L K Advani. Former BJP chief Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday met party president Rajnath Singh and Advani to discuss his possible role “if the party comes to power”.
On Wednesday, Gadkari, Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh will be in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, to hold parleys on government formation and organisational issues. If Modi takes over as Prime Minister, there is a possibility of Gujarat minister Anandiben Patel taking over as the new chief minister of the state.
