PATNA: The JD(U), which has been confronting leadership issue as Bihar braces up for the Assembly election next year, got a fresh poser from its ally Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which on Sunday questioned the single party announcement of a chief ministerial candidate in a “grand alliance”.
“When we are going to the polls as a grand alliance, how could a single party announce CM candidate alone,” asked senior RJD leader and former Union Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh.
Only a day before that former CM and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar had tried to throw his candidature by saying that he was not “running away from responsibilities”.
When asked about the JD(U)’s legitimacy to announce leader as being the largest party, the RJD leader quipped that his party was undoubtedly the largest party based on the former’s performance in the recently held Lok Sabha elections, where it for the first time contested the polls independently.
“The current strength of the JD(U) in terms of MLAs is of those days when the party contested along with the BJP,” he said, adding “policy and leadership issues will be decided at a joint meeting of all partners of the grand alliance.”
The leader of the RJD in the Legislative Assembly, Abdul Bari Siddiqui, too took a similar stand. He said even if the CM candidate was to be decided before the election, it should be done after the meeting of leaders of all the three constituents of the grand alliance.