PATNA: Even as it was an open secret that Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar was uncomfortable with BJP leaders Vijay Kumar Sinha and Sanjay Jaiswal when he was in NDA, senior JD (U) minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav on Thursday made it official by disclosing that their regular attacks on his government prompted Nitish to snap ties with BJP.
The minister’s statement on JD (U) quitting NDA for the second time came a few days after Nitish in a function revealed that he left the alliance after Yadav and another minister Sanjay Jha advised him to do so.
While Vijay Kumar Sinha who was Speaker of the state assembly in the former NDA government was showing Nitish government in a bad light in the assembly, state BJP president Jaiswal was doing the same thing outside the House, Yadav claimed.
Though Nitish’s disliking for Jaiswal had not turned into a public face-off, both CM and Sinha had an intense war of words inside the assembly over an issue related to the constituency of the speaker even when JD (U) was sharing power with BJP at that time.
“Sinha is now speaking against the Nitish government loudly but before doing so, he should tell about his performance when he was a minister in the Nitish cabinet. When Sinha remains in opposition, he speaks so many things but when he is in government, he does not work,” he remarked.
"It is intriguing what problem Sinha and Jaiswal have with Nitish,” he asked.
Yadav said that Jaiswal had opposed Nitish's policies vehemently even when NDA was in the saddle. He said Jaiswal was causing embarrassment to the Nitish government by asking questions on prohibition, law and order situation, corruption and officialdom.
Jaiswal had directly held the administration and police responsible for attacks on BJP leaders and their houses during the Agniveer stir in the state. It had triggered a verbal duel between Jaiswal and JD (U) president and MP Rajiv Ranjan Singh aka Lalan Singh.