Patna, Feb. 11: The Congress and the RJD today praised Nitish Kumar for "appreciating the hard reality of demonetisation" and supporting former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's stand on the note ban.

The Bihar chief minister and JDU president had described demonetisation as a "bold move aimed at curbing black money and corruption" yesterday. He had also echoed Manmohan in terming it a "monumental management failure" at a function in New Delhi to release P. Chidambaram's book, Fearless in Opposition: Power and Accountability.

"We heartily welcome Nitish for eventually appreciating the hard reality of demonetisation and toeing the line of economist and our former PM (Manmohan) who had sensed its disastrous consequences quite early and had described it as a monumental mismanagement," said state Congress chief spokesman Harkhu Jha.

RJD chief Lalu Prasad too said: "Nitish has been opposed to the communal forces ever since he has joined us. He had never blindly supported demonetisation. He had sought time to make up his mind on the issue. Now, he has realised that demonetisation has been implemented in a mismanaged way and has supported what Manmohan ji has said. We welcome it."

Nitish so far had desisted from supporting the Congress-sponsored agitation against demonetisation. But sources in the JDU revealed that Nitish - an architect of the JDU-RJD-Congress Grand Alliance in Bihar - was likely to formulate a "joint strategy" on the basis of common minimum programme to oppose the note ban in particular and other moves of the BJP in general.

"It is not that Nitish has changed his stand on note ban suddenly. He has from the very beginning criticised the manner in which demonetisation was implemented. But he believed that the move was aimed at curbing black money and corruption. So he was watchful. Now, with the Narendra Modi government not been able to tell the loss and gains of demonetisation and its long-term goal, Nitish's faith in the move has dwindled. After all, Nitish has given more than 90 days to the Centre to explain explicitly the loss and gains of the move," said senior JDU MP Ali Anwar.

Why Nitish, who was soft on demonetisation so far, has echoed the line of Manmohan Singh who too had not opposed demonetisation per se but had described it as "monumental management failure" that would impede the country's growth rate in his reaction in the Rajya Sabha on the issue in November?

Sources in the JDU and Congress enumerated three major factors leading Nitish to toe Manmohan's line. Initially, he assessed that during his Nishchay Yatra across the state, people at large were not very resentful to demonetisation despite the long queues at the banks and ATMs.

"But the feedback of late from the polling states such as Uttar Pradesh indicates that demonetisation had affected adversely a large section of people, who are now listening to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav enumerating the colossal losses due to it," said a senior Congress leader.

Second, the note ban and related economic crisis has caused loss of employment and job across the sectors and across the country adding to the already huge band of unemployed youths in India. "Though we have so far not specifically surveyed how many people from Bihar have exactly lost their jobs, according to our estimate, over a lakh of people have returned home in different parts of the state after losing their jobs in Gujarat, Haryana and Punjab among other states. The possibility of huge loss of jobs has led Nitish to rethink," said a senior JDU strategist.

Third, Nitish's soft pedalling on demonetisation was fuelling the perception that he was getting close to the BJP which he does not like at least at "this stage". Nitish has publicly stated that there was no question of getting back to the BJP on many occasions, of late, to dissipate this perception.

State JDU president Bashishtha Narayan Singh too said: "The JDU has already stated that it would assess the situation arising out of demonetisation after a certain time. The party is in the process of assessing the situation. Nitish ji has stated the party's line."