In another significant development, former chief minister and Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) president Jitan Ram Manjhi today finally walked out of the Opposition Grand Alliance in Bihar, blaming the RJD for not taking note of his demand for formation of a coordination committee.
Although he didn’t announce his next course of action, Manjhi looks set to return to the company of chief minister Nitish Kumar who had served him humiliating treatment and finally threw him out of the JD-U five years back.
A decision to break alliance with the Grand Alliance was taken at a meeting of the core committee of HAM held at the residence of Manjhi. “We had been constantly demanding the formation of a coordination committee but our demand was ignored,” Manjhi’s son and legislator Santosh Suman told newsmen today.
As such, Manjhi’s move to walk out of the Opposition alliance had virtually become a formality since for the past several months he had been constantly in touch with the chief minister.
Manjhi not only met the chief minister more than twice but had also been heaping praises on him at regular intervals that saw him slowly getting isolated within the Grand Alliance.
The result was the RJD stopped giving any importance to his observation or demand. Manjhi even tried to put pressure on the RJD by reaching out to the top Congress leadership but the RJD refused to budge.
Interestingly, Manjhi looks headed for the party, the JDU, which had pushed him out in a very humiliating manner in February 2015 after he had revolted against the chief minister.
Subsequently, he formed his own party and became a part of the NDA but his party put up a disastrous performance in the last 2015 assembly polls.
The RJD leadership slowly stopped taking note of his tantrums after Manjhi’s HAM put up a disastrous performance in the last year’s LS polls where it lost all the three seats.
HAM’s performance could be underlined from the fact that the Election Commission has now snatched its poll symbol of telephone for failing to garner four percent votes in the past elections.
Reports said the JD-U has offered 5 to 6 seats to HAM while he had been seeking more than 30 seats in the Grand Alliance. As such, Manjhi found his position in danger soon after another Dalit leader and JD-U minister Shyam Rajak returned to the RJD a couple of days back.
On the other hand, the CM wanted someone to project as Dalit face of the JD-U after Rajak left while he already had been facing constant attacks from Dalit leader Ram Vila Paswan who led the Lok Janshakti Party.
Meanwhile, three more RJD legislators joined the JDU today. They include Chandrika Rai, Faraz Fatmi and Jaivardhan Yadav.