Sulking JD(U) says it won’t join the Centre, alleges plot to weaken Nitish
PATNA: On a day Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar skipped the NITI Aayog meeting in Delhi for the second time in a row, his party continued to be in a sulk saying it will not join the Union ministry despite a vacancy created by its former member R C P Singh’s resignation from the Cabinet.
JD(U)’s national chief Rajiv Ranjan Singh a.k.a Lalan Singh said his party will stick to its 2019 stand on the issue. He, however, added that the JD(U) will continue to be part of the NDA.
In 2019, Nitish had announced that the party would stay away from the Union cabinet. “We still stick to our earlier stand,” he said.
He blamed R C P Singh for unilaterally reversing it in 2021 when the latter was the national head of the party. “Nitish Kumar could not react to his (RCP’s) decision for obvious reasons,” Lalan claimed.
Lalan also obliquely attacked the state BJP, saying a plot was being hatched to weaken Nitish. A second Chirag Paswan model was being conjured up to do so, he alleged.
Paswan had been fielding his party’s candidates against the JD(U) in the Assembly elections, which resulted in the defeat of the JD(U) in about 20 Assembly seats. As a result, the JD-U tally was reduced to 43 and the party stood at third after RJD and BJP in the Bihar assembly.
Talking to reporters on Sunday, the JD-U national president said that conspirators would be exposed at an appropriate time. On RCP Singh’s remark that JD-U is a “sinking ship”, Lalan said that it was a “floating ship”.
Though Nitish skipped the Niti Aayog meeting, he attended an event organised by Bihar Industry Department and another function in Patna.
Bihar BJP spokesperson Prem Ranjan Patel said, “Nitish may have not gone to NITI meeting due to his other official engagement.”