PTI

HYDERABAD

THE Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) would announce its prime ministerial candidate ahead of the 2014 general elections after due discussions, senior party leader M Venkaiah Naidu said on Thursday.

“We will announce at the time of polls who is the prime ministerial candidate.

Congress, which is in power, itself has not announced.

Today, the situation is such that we have to say who is the leader. People see who the leader is... the party will decide,” he told reporters here. Noting a ‘third alternative’ cannot emerge in the country, he said BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is the only alternative to United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

“The Communists who usually talk about Third Front, they are also not talking about it these days,” he said.

The string of losses suffered by Congress in the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and other states, the local body polls in Mumbai and Thane in Maharashtra, and now in Delhi reflect the public anger against the ruling party, Naidu claimed.

“The minorities are said to be pro-Congress. But the results in Goa and now in Delhi show that they are moving away from Congress.

In fact, Congress has lost the confidence of all sections of people in the country,” he said.

Naidu alleged the main reasons for the disenchantment against Congress are the “massive corruption, the mis- governance in the form of faulty policies and harassment of non-Congress ruled states and its failure to check price rise which has broken the back of common man”.

Meanwhile, setting aside internal differences, the BJP on Thursday declared SS Ahluwalia- its outgoing Deputy Leader in Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Indian parliament- as the party candidate from Jharkhand for the biennial elections to the Upper House.

Ahluwalia, who completed fourth term as a Rajya Sabha MP on April 2, was denied a ticket by the BJP despite being an effective Deputy Leader of the party.

He was MP from Jharkhand in his last term as well. BJP had decided not to put up a candidate from Jharkhand where it is a party of the ruling coalition headed by JMM.

The latter had fielded Supreme Court lawyer Sanjeev Kumar as its candidate.

The Jharkhand Rajya Sabha polls had run into a controversy when Rs 2.15 Crore cash was seized from an SUV belonging to a kin of one of the Independent candidates R K Agarwal.

Election Commission had countermanded the elections due to use of money power to win these elections.

Ahluwalia thanked BJP for “reposing faith in him”.

Ahluwalia got this opportunity after the BJP did a rethink on the issue when fresh elections were announced by the Election Commission.