New Delhi, July 13: The majority of Congress leaders are not in agreement with chief minister Nitish Kumar's posturing on the corruption issues that Lalu Prasad's family is grappling with, arguing that the Janata Dal United should have seen the BJP's larger agenda of destabilising the coalition.

The Congress still hopes for an "amicable solution" to the crisis, but many leaders argued in private that there were better ways of dealing with the issues than creating an unseemly public spectacle. "It would be naive to ignore the element of political vendetta in the entire exercise," a top party strategist told The Telegraph.

"Nitish broke away from the BJP and embraced a convicted Lalu to fight the Narendra Modi-led BJP. That time the JDU said they were aligning with a party, not an individual. Now they have staked the future of the alliance on an individual. If there is an ultimatum by the JDU for Tejashwi Yadav to quit, there should have been a simultaneous assertion that the alliance won't break. Why is there so much speculation about re-marriage with the BJP?" the strategist asked.

Nitish is understood to have said at a party meet that Tejashwi has to resign, but did not lay down a time-frame.

Congress leaders have been asked by Rahul Gandhi not to speak against Nitish as they want to retain him in the secular alliance. But many senior leaders conceded the JDU was viewed with suspicion by most parties after its decision to support Ram Nath Kovind, the BJP's pick for President. "We wonder whether Nitish was laying the ground for another somersault. Does he feel the Opposition doesn't have a chance in 2019 and it would be difficult to retain Bihar with Lalu in 2020? Why is he not ruling out the BJP?"

Another leader said: "Nobody is saying corruption is not an issue but we can't surrender to the Narendra Modi government's political machinations. Let the probe establish Tejashwi's guilt. But we wonder why were repeated raids required at Lalu's house? Did the CBI or income-tax department not seize all incriminating material in one raid? How many times were raids conducted on BJP chief ministers of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan in the Vyapam, rice and mining scams?"

Congress leaders also contested the perception that they too want Tejashwi to put in his papers, insisting that it was up to Lalu and the RJD to formulate their responses. They said the Congress understood there was a witch-hunt and hence the yardstick of political morality cannot be blindly applied in this case. They recalled how the Trinamul Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi Party, NCP and the Congress were being selectively targeted while even serious charges against BJP ministers were ignored.

Some leaders also asked if removing ministers on the basis of political morality by Sonia Gandhi during the UPA regime had paid off. "We removed railway minister Pawan Bansal because his nephew was allegedly involved in transfer-posting. We removed Shashi Tharoor because of a cricket controversy and Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan because his mother-in-law had a flat in the Adarsh society. But Modi, who boasts of a clean image, didn't remove any of his charge-sheeted and convicted ministers when he was chief minister of Gujarat. He didn't take action against anybody after becoming Prime Minister, be it in the Lalit Modi scam or the Panama papers," said a leader.

At a time when 18 Opposition parties have decided to forcefully fight the Modi government in the Parliament session starting on July 17, no leader is happy with the instability in Bihar. Ironically, political vendetta is one of the key issues the Opposition wants to take up, along with ill-effects of demonetisation, a flawed GST regime, agrarian distress and unemployment.