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Upendra Kushwaha |
New Delhi, Jan. 3: Rebel JD(U) Rajya Sabha member Upendra Kushwaha today resigned from the Upper House of Parliament, concretising his estrangement with chief minister Nitish Kumar.
“I submitted my resignation to the Rajya Sabha chairman in the afternoon and will formally resign from the party on Friday. At a rally in Patna’s Gandhi Maidan on March 3, I will announce the name of the political party I am forming with like-minded political workers,” he told The Telegraph.
Kushwaha, who fell out with the chief minister recently and openly criticised him for being a “dictator” and “preferring sycophants over true party workers”, had already announced his plans on December 9 in Patna.
The disgruntled MP had also voted in favour of FDI in multi-brand retails, defying the party line.
Kushwaha, who was the Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly between 2000-2005 when Rabri Devi was the chief minister, had been criticising the NDA regime for “creating a false hype of development in Bihar”.
During his first public announcement that he was parting ways with Nitish in December last year, former JD (U) MPs and MLAs Arun Kumar, Satish Kumar, Lutfur Rahman and Sudhanshu Shekhar Bhaskar had also shared the stage with Kushwaha and expressed their solidarity with his decision to form a new party.
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