PATNA: Political temperature has heated up in Bihar after union minister and Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) founder Jitan Ram Manjhi threatened to give up his cabinet berth as his party was not getting a fair deal ahead of assembly elections due later this year.
Manjhi's statement came at a public meeting held in Munger on Tuesday where he expressed his displeasure over HAM being neglected by the NDA. He cited the case of assembly elections in Delhi and Jharkhand where his party was not given a single seat.
Quoting a verse from RamCharitmanas that 'Bin bhay na hot priti (fear begets respect), former Bihar chief minister said that he would have to prove his worth in Bihar. "It seems that I will have to resign from the cabinet," he said.
HAM spokesperson Danish Rizwan clarified that Jitan Ram Manjhi was misquoted by some media outlets. "He didn't mean to say that. He mentioned he was getting late due to a scheduled union cabinet meeting," Rizwan explained.
Earlier, Manjhi created a flutter in political circles after he demanded 20 seats in the assembly polls. Manjhi said, "Our workers are asking to contest 40 seats in the assembly elections but we think that we should contest at least 20 seats."
With the Bihar assembly election due in October-November, the grand alliance started firing on all cylinders to extract maximum political mileage out of Manjhi`s statement.
Manjhi`s HAM is known as a hard bargainer and it would be interesting to see how two major constituents of the NDA in Bihar- BJP and JD (U) – satisfy the senior leader`s growing ambition.
Manjhi has announced plans to demonstrate his party's strength in Bihar, with a party workers' conference scheduled at Gandhi Maidan in Patna on February 28. "Don't underestimate us, we will show our strength," said the union minister.
JD(U) MLC Neeraj Kumar stated that all leaders in the NDA are united, citing Manjhi's role as a minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet. He added that NDA leaders in Bihar are holding joint conferences, emphasizing that the NDA remains strong on all issues while the grand alliance leaders are free to "daydream" about problems within the NDA.
Senior BJP leader and state health minister Mangal Pandey also asserted that the NDA was intact in Bihar and all constituents were respected. “NDA leaders sit together and take decisions through consensus,” he remarked.
Sensing that the seat sharing exercise in the grand alliance is not going to be smooth sailing, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav even went to the extent of saying that the opposition INDIA block was meant for the Lok Sabha election. Before that, RJD chief Lalu Prasad also said that TMC leader and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee should be allowed to lead the INDIA bloc.
Even his remark was seen as an attempt to give a strong signal to Congress. Although a remarkable bonhomie between Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and RJD leaders-Lalu-Tejashwi was seen during the former’s visit to the state capital, it is doubtful whether they will keep the same warmth when they huddle together to discuss seat sharing for the assembly election.
In the 2020 election, Congress contested 70 seats but could win only 19 seats. On the other hand, CPI (ML) won 12 out of 19 seats it contested.