Was Nitish Kumar scared to see Uddhav Thackeray’s condition?
News
-DW News
New Delhi, 09 Aug.
In the midst of political turmoil, JDU has blamed the BJP for parting ways. On Tuesday, a meeting of the JDU Legislature Party was called at the Chief Minister’s residence at 1, Ane Marg, Patna. Referring to the RCP Singh episode, it was termed as a conspiracy to weaken Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Deciding to part ways with the BJP, the MLAs authorized Nitish Kumar for a new alliance. During the meeting, Nitish Kumar clearly told his MPs and MLAs that BJP always tried to weaken JDU along with humiliating it. BJP has cheated till now.
Tejashwi Yadav, the leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) legislature party and Lalu Prasad’s younger son, has submitted support letters of about 115 MLAs to Nitish Kumar, including RJD, Congress and Left. At the same time, JDU Parliamentary Board President Upendra Kushwaha has congratulated Nitish Kumar for the new alliance by tweeting that Nitish ji, go ahead, the country is waiting for you. Lalu’s daughters have also congratulated their brother Tejashwi.
After reaching the Raj Bhavan at around 4 pm, Nitish Kumar submitted his resignation to Governor Fagu Chauhan. At present, out of 243 seats in the Bihar Legislative Assembly, RJD has 79, BJP 77, JDU 45, Congress 19, Left 16, Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) four and AIMIM one and one Independent, while Mokama (Patna). One seat is vacant due to the conviction of RJD MLA Anant Singh.
It is quite an old series of strife
The role of this day in the politics of Bihar was being prepared long back. The tussle between BJP and JDU, the two major constituents of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the state, was clearly visible several times.
This trend started only after the 2019 general elections, when JDU could not find a place in the Union Cabinet for three members as per the demand. After this, the role of Chirag Paswan, who called himself Narendra Modi’s Hanuman in the 2020 assembly elections, played an important role in deepening the wound.
At that time, Chirag Paswan was talking about staying in NDA on one hand and on the other hand was also targeting Nitish government. He selectively fielded candidates on most of the 115 seats in JDU’s share, which became a problem for JDU and the party was reduced from 71 to 43 seats. In the eyes of JDU, it was the complicity of BJP.
After this, the way in which the discussion about making Union Minister Nityanand Rai as Chief Minister intensified during the Bochan assembly constituency by-election, JDU had to go through exasperation. This time, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was also uncomfortable with the heated debate with Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha during the budget session of the Assembly that BJP angered him by calling Chirag Paswan to the NDA meeting in view of the Presidential elections.
Even Nitish Kumar was never comfortable with BJP’s state president Dr. Sanjay Jaiswal. Nitish was also opposed to the BJP on the issue of PM Narendra Modi’s one country, one election i.e. holding the assembly and Lok Sabha elections simultaneously. Similarly, in the expansion of the Bihar cabinet, the interference of the BJP’s central leadership and not taking their opinion was exasperated by them.
It is not that no effort was made by the BJP to address Nitish Kumar’s displeasure. In this connection, on May 5, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan suddenly reached Patna and met the Chief Minister. It was said that BJP also assured Nitish of action after the presidential election, but nothing happened accordingly.
JDU shocked by Nadda’s statement
Even though JDU did not give much importance to Chirag Paswan’s issue in the happiness of the victory of the last assembly elections, but JDU created a mood only when joint meeting with seven fronts was done on the pretext of finding out the reality of central plans. Amit Shah and JP Nadda came to Bihar in the last week of July. Amit Shah talked about fighting the next election together with Nitish Kumar, while Nadda said that only big parties will remain, regional parties will cease to exist.
Meanwhile, the smell of BJP’s alleged conspiracy with its own party’s former union minister RCP Singh strengthened the JD(U)’s belief that BJP is preparing ‘Eknath Shinde’ here on the lines of Maharashtra. JDU National President Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh, while referring to the Chirag model, also said that once again the work on the Chirag model was going on in the state in collaboration with former Union Minister RCP Singh.
The JDU president said that he had enough evidence to say that a conspiracy was being hatched to break the party.
Nitish always keeps the other way open
According to political analysts, Nitish Kumar always keeps another way open to avoid pressure. This is the reason that for the last two decades, the politics of Bihar has revolved around him. Nitish Kumar, who took oath as Chief Minister seven times in the last 20 years, has been doing a kind of independent politics in his own way.
A senior BJP leader, on condition of anonymity, says, “Nitish Kumar came to power by doing politics of protest against Lalu, but he did not mind when he formed the government with his help. The Lalu family was not corrupt then. Now after running the government for two years, BJP started seeing him as a conspirator. Such has been their history. From George Fernandes, Sharad Yadav to RCP, whom did he leave. I don’t know when and who he likes and he becomes bad again.
JDU spokesperson Neeraj Kumar says, “An attempt was made to reduce the stature of our leader Nitish Kumar. This is not acceptable to even the smallest worker. According to the JDU spokesperson, the party felt that the Modi-Shah BJP did not have that much respect for its allies. They are in favor of yen-ken-type power grab. Therefore, as soon as the activities of its old president RCP were confirmed, the party did not make him a Rajya Sabha candidate again.
However, at the same time there is no less to say that Lalan Singh and Upendra Kushwaha have avenged the BJP by blaming the RCP for not being made Union ministers. If Nitish Kumar liked Lalu or his son Tejashwi so much, then why leave him in 2017? “The question was of political existence, so it had to happen,” says senior journalist SK Pandey.
Source: DW
