A day after Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar trashed election strategist Prashant Kishor’s swipe that he was keeping his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) channel open despite being in the Grand Alliance, the latter on Saturday hit back at him again, challenging the Janata Dal (United) leader to ask his party MP Harivansh to quit the post of Rajya Sabha deputy chairman if they had nothing to do with the BJP.
“NitishKumar ji, if you have nothing to do with BJP / NDA then ask your MP to quit the post of Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha. You can’t have both ways all the time,” he tweeted.
Kumar on Friday said that he would not like to comment on Kishor’s statements. “Why do you ask me about what he says? He does it for publicity only,” he said.
Kishor, who is presently on a statewide yatra, has trained his guns against the Bihar chief minister accusing him of “planning another summersault to rejoin the BJP”.
Senior JD(U) leader and energy minister Bijendra Yadav, hit out at Kishor. “Who is Prashant Kishor?” I don’t know anyone by this name,” he said.
JD(U) general secretary KC Tyagi said, “When Nitish Kumar has categorically said he would never ever get back to the BJP, such statements to drag his name is uncalled for. Whether Harivansh remains deputy chairman or not is between him and the BJP. Nitish Kumar has left it to the conscience of Harivansh,” he added.
RJD leader Shakti Singh Yadav said Kishor was not a political leader to be taken note of.
JD(U) and RJD will merge, claims BJP
Meanwhile, the BJP has said that the JD (U) could merge with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) sooner or later, which has also been rejected by Kumar and his men.
Leader of Opposition Vijay Kumar Sinha said, “Nitish Kumar knows his days are numbered and his party could lose trace in Bihar. So, he may plan a dignified exit for himself by ensuring merger of his party with the RJD before handing over reins to Tejashwi. Nitish’s ambition to be PM will prove costly for him and he will have to vacate CM’s chair. He knows the BJP can never accept him anymore. There is no other vacancy for him anywhere.”
Senior BJP leaders Sushil Kumar Modi and Nand Kishore Yadav have also maintained that the RJD-JD(U) merger was just a matter of time. Former JD(U) president RCP Singh also backed the merger theory, saying Nitish Kumar had been left with “just one option of merger after having switched sides several times in the past”.
Kishor sends feelers to Manjhi, claims HAM
Meanwhile, another Grand Alliance (GA) constituent in Bihar, former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM), on the other hand, has said that Kishor has been sending feelers to its party leaders that he wanted to work with Manjhi. “What PK says is not going to make any difference to the GA. Whether he can work with us or not is a decision our party leadership will have to take,” said HAM spokesman, Danish Rizwan.
Meanwhile, Manjhi has said that he would not mind “if Kumar switches side in the interest of the state”. “I don’t know what he will do. I don’t know his calculation. He says he will never get back to the BJP. But I can say by my personal experience that in politics, two plus two is not always four. It can be six or even two. Former Bihar CM Mahamaya Babu had once said that if he had to switch sides 100 times, he would not mind if it was in the public interest. I will welcome any such move if Kumar thinks of switching sides. But at present there seems to be nothing like this,” he added.
PK may not have announced full plunge in politics so far, but he is doing enough to make a splash through his ongoing 3000-km long padyatra across the state with continued attacks on all the three major political players in Bihar by raising issues of unemployment, poverty, migration and a small political class calling the shots in the state for decades. However, Nitish Kumar remains at the centre of his attacks.
Social analyst NK Choudhary said that PK was trying to create political space for himself and working with a definite plan, knowing that both Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad did not have age by their side. “Having worked with top political leaders, he knows what it takes. Hitherto he worked for others. Now he is working for himself. Bihar has enough political space, but these are still early days for PK. But he has certainly managed to draw both public and political attention towards himself by engaging leaders,” he added.
