Nitish plays peacemaker to form a Bihar-style alliance in Assam

NEW DELHI: JD- U leader Nitish Kumar is playing the peacemaker between sworn enemies Congress and All India United Democratic Front ( AIUDF) in an attempt at cobbling together a Bihar-style grand alliance in Assam to thwart the BJP’s aggressive bid for capturing power in the northeast state.

Assembly elections in Assam are due early next year and the BJP is making serious attempts to capture power in the state for the first time.

Perfume baron-turned politician Badruddin Ajmal had float- ed the AIUDF as an alternative to the Congress which he had accused of “using” the state’s sizeable Muslims population as merely a vote bank.

Chief minister Tarun Gogoi had earlier famously dismissed the fledgling AIUDF with a curt “Who is Badruddin Ajmal?” barb, seen as the beginning of the bitter turf war between the two parties.

Kumar, who vanquished the BJP in the high- stakes Bihar assembly recently, has suggested a compromise formula so that the Congress and the AIUDF can fight the March-April elections as alliance partners and prevent any division of votes.

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