Nitish Kumar stepped down voluntarily, not under BJP pressure: Samrat Choudhary

Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary has declared that JD(U) president Nitish Kumar relinquished the chief ministerial post voluntarily and was not pressured by the BJP to make way for saffron party leadership in the state.

Nitish acknowledged Vajpayee's gesture, chose to reciprocate

Speaking at an event organised by a leading media group, Choudhary, who is the first BJP leader to head a government in Bihar, emphasised that Kumar "remains the NDA's undisputed leader in Bihar" despite now serving as a Rajya Sabha MP. "Nitish Kumar stepped down of his own accord. We had not asked him to do so," Choudhary said.

The Chief Minister revealed that Kumar had acknowledged a historic debt to the BJP, specifically recalling how Atal Bihari Vajpayee had allowed him to become Chief Minister for the first time even when the BJP had more MLAs than his party, and that Kumar now wanted to reciprocate the gesture. Choudhary made this assertion at the media group event.

The reference pointed to a political development in 2000, when Assembly polls had thrown up a hung house and Kumar, whose outfit was then known as "Samata Party", took oath as Chief Minister but resigned within a week as the NDA failed to cobble up a majority.

BJP's support extended to rival Lalu Prasad as well

While highlighting the "support" the BJP always extended to Kumar, Choudhary also pointed out that RJD president Lalu Prasad, the saffron party's staunch adversary, too, owed his stature in politics to the "benediction" of the NDA's largest partner. "Lalu ji became the Chief Minister of Bihar thanks to the benediction of the BJP," said Choudhary.

The Chief Minister added a pointed reminder: "Of course, those who witnessed that era would also recall that in doing so he snatched away the rightful claim of Dalit leader Ram Sundar Das".

The 1990 legislative party leader election

Prasad was in the Janata Dal in 1990 when it formed a government in the state with outside support of the BJP. Das, who had enjoyed a short tenure as chief minister in the 1970s, was again in the race and said to have enjoyed the support of the then Prime Minister V. P. Singh.

However, in the election for legislative party leader, Das lost to Prasad by a narrow margin, which political analysts attribute to a split among upper-caste MLAs, as another Janata Dal leader, Raghunath Jha, threw his hat in the ring.

Response to "selected, not elected" jibe

Choudhary, who incidentally had started as a Minister in the government of Rabri Devi, the wife of Prasad, who succeeded him as CM, also bristled at their son Tejashwi Yadav mocking him as a "selected, and not elected" leader.

Without mentioning by name Yadav, the RJD working president who is also leader of the opposition in the State Assembly, the Chief Minister said, "He should remember that her mother too was not elected by the people when she first became the CM. And his party had not announced beforehand that it would back him for the Deputy CM's post".

Choudhary sidesteps question on tenure till 2030

Choudhary, whose ascent as the Chief Minister, within less than a decade of joining the BJP, is understood to have caused a lot of heartburn in the party, ducked a query as to whether he was confident of staying in office till the next Assembly polls in 2030.

He said, "I am a small leader who owes his standing to the blessings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar, the NDA's undisputed leader in Bihar. The party has given me a lot".

The Chief Minister listed his rapid rise through party ranks: "I was made state president, became Deputy CM twice and, for the first time, got the Home portfolio, which earlier remained with the CM. I am focused on doing my job".

Government priorities and flood response

Choudhary said his priorities were law and order and education, besides better revenue generation through industrialisation. He also claimed that his government was effectively tackling the current floods, ably assisted by the Centre and that the State was also working towards long-term measures like inter-linking of rivers.

The Chief Minister's remarks underscore the complex political history between the BJP and regional parties in Bihar, where power-sharing arrangements and leadership transitions have been shaped by decades of coalition arithmetic and personal relationships forged during earlier experiments in alliance governance.

Source: The Hindu