Patna: The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has decided not to put up any candidate in the Gujarat Assembly elections next month and extend its support to the Congress, party chief Lalu Prasad said in Patna on Sunday.
Prasad appealed to minorities, backwards, Dalits, farmers and labourers, and Yadavs of Gujarat to vote against the BJP to ensure its defeat. “The RJD will support the Congress party. We will not put up our own candidates in the Gujarat elections,” Prasad told reporters in Patna after the party’s national executive meeting.
Prasad said Patidar leader Hardik Patel has invited him to visit Gujarat and he would oblige him if he gets time. The RJD chief said the JD(U), headed by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, is putting up candidates in the Gujarat Assembly elections.
“I don’t know what Sharad Yadav would do. It has no meaning at the moment,” Prasad told reporters in Patna.
The Election Commission on Friday recognised the group led by Kumar as the Janata Dal (United), rejecting the claim of the Sharad Yadav faction over the party’s name and election symbol.
Earlier, addressing the members of the national executive, Prasad said Kumar is putting up candidates to split ‘Patel votes’ in the Gujarat elections. Prasad said the RJD would hold a ‘Parivartan Rally’ three months before the Lok Sabha “to uproot the BJP”.
The BJP-led government’s Union ministers have only one point agenda to criticise him, he said. He said not a single MP of the NDA, who had won from Bihar, would return to the Lok Sabha next time. Prasad was elected unopposed to the post of the RJD national president on 14 November 2017. The party will hold an open session and national council meeting on 21 November where Prasad’s election as president will be ratified.