BJP keen on pact with hill party for civic polls

The office of Jaswant Singh opened at Ashrampara in Siliguri on Wednesday.

Siliguri, July 29: The BJP today said it would prefer to keep its “alliance” with the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and they would together field candidates in the coming Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC) elections.

The BJP had fielded Jaswant Singh in the Darjeeling Lok Sabha constituency and won the seat with the support extended by the Morcha.

“We are in touch with the Morcha leaders. We have together won the Darjeeling parliament seat. Our party is interested in contesting the SMC elections on the same understanding and strategy and have high hopes that the alliance will perform well,” Biswapriya Roychoudhury, the Bengal general secretary of the BJP, said here today.

Roychoudhury, who inaugurated an office of the Darjeeling MP at Ashrampara in town, said the alliance would contest all the 47 wards of the civic body on September 13.

“Parleys are on with the Morcha leadership regarding the seat-sharing. I will be back in Siliguri in mid-August to finalise the candidates’ list. We are always in favour of forming an anti-Left civic board and will strive for that,” said the BJP leader.

He also said the BJP was aware of the tie-up between two major anti-Left forces.

“We know that the Congress and the Trinamul Congress will forge an alliance and want to clarify that no political party has approached us so far to form any alliance or for even an informal understanding. We are keeping our options open. If the BJP’s local leaders feel that it is imperative to keep the Left out of the power, they are free to take their own decision on tie-ups. The state leadership will not intervene,” said Roychoudhury.

Arun Prasad Sarkar, the Darjeeling district president of the BJP, said the office would help Jaswant Singh interact with the residents in the plains of his constituency. “We hope that the office will contribute in speeding up development works likely to be taken up by our leader in the constituency.”

source:The Telegraph