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Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi
Bharatiya Janata Party leaders on Saturday dismissed Union minister Maneka Gandhi's absence from the National Democratic Alliance pre-poll meeting in Lucknow on Friday as 'misunderstanding'.
"It is not possible for us to entertain the requests of all our allies on seat (sharing) arrangements," party spokesman Sunil Shastri said.
"Manekaji is bound to see reason and the matter will be amicably solved and we will give a combined fight to the opposition," he said.
He also disagreed that the Union minister (holding the programme implementation and statistics portfolio) was sulking with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for abruptly changing her environment portfolio.
"Every minister knows that allotting portfolios is the prerogative of the prime minister and, therefore, there is no question of anybody sulking (over any portfolio)," Shastri said.
He added that even Union ministers Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan had their portfolios changed.
"She, after all, is comparatively young and she will realise that Prime Minister Vajpayee cannot accommodate every alliance partner's desire," senior BJP leader Jagdish Prasad Mathur said.
He said he was confident that Maneka would not create hurdles in the way of 'the BJP retaining power in Uttar Pradesh and join the National Democratic Alliance to make the opposition parties bite the dust'.
BJP sources, however, pointed out that both Yadav and Paswan had similarly expressed their displeasure when Vajpayee changed their portfolios (civil aviation and communications respectively).
They also said that both the leaders had haggled over seat sharing arrangements with the prime minister and the BJP chief K Jana Krishnamurthy.
Paswan's party got a total of eight seats in Uttar Pradesh, when he had asked for a minimum of 15, while the JD (U) -- Sharad Yadav's party -- got less than 20, when it was clamouring for 35, the sources said.
The sources indicated that both Yadav and Paswan have been asked by the prime minister to make Maneka see reason in the overall interests of NDA unity.
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