New Delhi, Jan 23: BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu was today understood to have done some tough-talking to the party's Uttar Pradesh unit chief Vinay Katiyar who reportedly threatened that the party would quit the Mayawati-led coalition government in the state.

Naidu, party sources said, counseled restraint to Katiyar who has already been told by the BJP high command to tone down his remarks on Dalit leader B R Ambedkar's views on Hinduism. Katiyar conveyed to Naidu that he had not made the remarks about the BJP's stand on its alliance with BSP.

"Katiyar told the party president who spoke to him on phone today that he had not made any remarks attributed to him and that it was a conspiracy by Samajwadi Party to create a rift between the two parties," BJP spokesman Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told reporters here.

At a meeting in Etawah yesterday, Katiyar had taken serious view of party workers' complaints of "partisan and uncooperative attitude" of the officials in the Mayawati administration and threatened to pull down the government if they were not shown enough respect.
Katiyar told Naidu "some mischievous Samajwadi Party elements were propagating that BSP-BJP would be splitting soon and therefore they were carrying out this conspiracy."

Naqvi said Katiyar was touring around the state as part of a campaign to mobilise support for BJP and the party was also working on evolving a mechanism for better coordination between the two parties modeled along the lines of a coordination committee without the powers of the committee.

Naqvi said Katiyar had never described Ambedkar as anti-Muslim or that he favoured a Hindu rasthra and Katiyar had been misquoted. Bureau Report