Patna: BJP MLC Sanjay Paswan’s statement against chief minister Nitish Kumar has heated up the political temperature in Bihar.
While talking to reporters in Patna Mr Paswan said that “Nitish Kumar should give BJP state unit a chance to lead the government. He has served the state for about 15 years and the BJP should get an opportunity”.
“He (Nitish Kumar) is a tall leader but the people want to see a change in state politics. He can move to the Centre and take charge in the Union Cabinet as he had done in the past,” he added.
The statement has drawn some strong reactions from the JD(U) here. Party’s spokesperson Sanjay Singh said that “BJP leaders who have been making such statements should also remember the 2015 Assembly election results in which the BJP had lost and not the JD(U). In Bihar, people have shown complete faith in Nitish Kumar and nobody can stand in front of him.”
The Assembly elections in Bihar are due in November 2020 and the JD(U) has already declared Nitish Kumar as the NDA’s face by putting up posters in his support.
Political analysts said that the JD(U) stand on sensitive issues like NRC and Article 370 may have irked BJP leaders in Bihar. A section in the BJP also feels that the JD(U)’s different stand on such issues has created confusion among the voters.
A day after over 19 Lakh people were excluded from the final list of NRC in Assam, the JD(U) which is an ally of the BJP in Bihar had reacted strongly. In a statement poll strategist and JD(U), Vice President Prashant Kishor had termed the exercise as “botched up” and said that “the NRC has left Lakhs of people as foreigners in their own country. Such is the price people pay when political posturing and rhetoric is misunderstood as a solution for complex issues related to national security without paying attention to strategic and systematic challenges”.
