Is something cooking between the RJD and the JD-U in Bihar? Although nothing is officially known about this, claims and counterclaims by the two parties have infused sudden interest in Bihar politics.
In a fresh political development, former RJD minister Shayam Rajak today claimed at least 17 JD-U legislators were in touch with the RJD to switch sides any time.
“At least 17 JD-U legislators are desperate to join the RJD at the earliest since they are feeling suffocated in the company of Nitish Kumar who has literally surrendered before the BJP. However, we have told them to wait till their number goes up to 28 since we don’t want to violate anti-defection law,” Rajak told the newsmen today.
He claimed their strength would touch the required number very soon.
Strangely, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar was quick to reject such claims although he is not known for making comments over such issues; rather he allows his smaller party leaders to give their comments over them.
“This kind of claim is totally baseless,” the chief minister said today.
JD-U spokesperson Sanjay Singh, on the other hand, claimed 18 RJD legislators were touch with the JD-U and would cross over to the latter after ‘Kharmas’ (end of inauspicious month) on 14 January.
Only yesterday, the RJD suggested the chief minister to quit the NDA and return to the Grand Alliance, citing BJP’s alleged contempt for smaller parties.
However, the RJD’s condition is that Kumar should install Tejashwi Yadav the chief minister of Bihar and the RJD in turn would try to project him as the Prime Ministerial candidate in 2024. The very offer has come from senior RJD leader and former assembly Speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary.
Political circles are agog with the news that the chief minister has been known for surprising everyone with his “unexpected decisions” and it won’t be a surprise if he displayed another such move very soon the way he did a couple of days back by relinquishing the post of the JDU’s national president and handing it to his close confidant RCP Singh, a Rajya Sabha member.
Again, in 2013, Kumar had walked away from the NDA after Narendra Modi, then Gujarat chief minister, was projected as the NDA’s Prime Ministerial candidate, in 2014, he resigned as the chief minister and handed over his throne to Jitan Ram Manjhi after his party fared badly in LS polls while in 2015, he joined hands with his archrival, RJD president Lalu Prasad. Barely two years later, he broke alliance with the RJD midway and returned to the NDA.
The fresh twist in the state politics has come after the BJP caused a split in the JD-U in Arunachal Pradesh and inducted six of total seven legislators into the party, leaving its Bihar ally furious.
The JD-U has dropped ample indications in the past one week that it is in no mood to forgive its ally over the issue.