Chennai, Mar 13: Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) President M Karunanidhi today said the choice of A B Vajpayee as the prime ministerial candidate would become doubtful in the event of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) getting a majority on its own in the coming Lok Sabha elections. Answering questions, he said as Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani kept talking about collective leadership, it was 99 per cent doubtful whether the BJP would retain Vajpayee for the post of prime minister after the polls. Addressing an election rally in Coimbatore on March 11, Advani, recalling the BJP's growth in the last five decades, had said it had always been collective leadership which helped the party to grow. Giving an impression that no one was supreme in the party, he had reiterated this point, while addressing a press conference the next day, stating that the BJP would continue to have collective leadership. Karunanidhi clarified that he never attempted to drive a wedge between Vajpayee and Advani when he had made a remark that the BJP-AIADMK alliance was an ''Advani-Jayalalithaa alliance'' and not ''Vajpayee-Jayalalithaa alliance.''
Bureau Report