Mid-term polls unlikely: Nitish Kumar

Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today said the NDA was prepared for mid-term Lok Sabha polls, but maintained that UPA did not favour snap polls as it wanted to “cling” to power till its full term. [caption id=“attachment_241370” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today said the NDA was prepared for mid-term Lok Sabha polls, but maintained that UPA did not favour snap polls as it wanted to “cling” to power till its full term. Reuters”]  [/caption] “The UPA government does not want to go for mid-term polls and it is likely that it will cling to power till its full term by taking recourse to all means (for a majority in Parliament),” he told reporters here. The Chief Minister said that NDA, on the other hand, favoured mid-term polls in the country. He was asked to comment on the possibility of early elections in the wake of the poor performance by the Congress in the recent Assembly polls in five states. “There is no two opinion that Congress has been weakened to an extent on the basis of its performance in the five states,” he said. On speculation about revival of the Third Front in view of the performance of the two national parties — Congress and BJP — in the five states, Kumar said, the contour of such a Front was still to take shape. The senior JD(U) leader, however, sought to distance himself and his party from the proposed Third Front saying that his party was an integral part of the NDA. “The JD(U) remains an integral part of the NDA,” Kumar added. PTI