Patna, July 19: The BJP today fired a volley of questions at chief minister Nitish Kumar, but was also careful to keep the attack focused more on deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav.
The Opposition party's attack came a day after Tejashwi met Nitish in a closed-door meeting at the secretariat in which the deputy chief minister is understood to have explained his stand on the charges in the CBI FIR against him in the land-for-hotels case.
Sources in the BJP said that senior state leaders were intentionally avoiding a vitriolic attack on Nitish as his image on the corruption issue has been very clean and also because the party was hopeful that the Grand Alliance could break in Bihar which may open up the possibility of a new alignment of political forces in the state.
The other Grand Alliance constituents - the RJD and the Congress - tried to project the Tejashwi-Nitish meeting as proof that "all is well" with the state government. Sources in these two parties also hinted that Tejashwi had explained his position - that the charges against him are nothing but a political vendetta unleashed by the BJP - before the chief minister.
"The chief minister should tell whether he is still adhering to his policy of zero tolerance on corruption after a closed-door meeting with Tejashwi or has he compromised with his values for the sake of chair?" asked senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi.
Modi also wanted to know whether the chief minister had dropped the idea of removing Tejashwi from his council of ministers as, Modi said, the deputy chief minister had not come out with a point-by-point reply on the charges against him - as the chief minister's party, the JDU, had asked after its state executive meeting last week.
Another BJP prominent face and leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, Prem Kumar, was more trenchant in his criticism. Instead of asking any questions to the chief minister, Prem Kumar to launch a state-wise agitation on the Tejashwi issue.
"If Nitishji does not take any action against Tejashwi, our party would stage protests both on the floor of the state legislature and on the roads," Prem told The Telegraph.
He maintained that as the chief minister had not taken any action against Tejashwi even after 14 days of the CBI lodging an FIR against his deputy, a wrong message was going out to the people of the state.
The CBI had lodged an FIR against Tejashwi, his parents Lalu Prasad and Rabri Devi, and few others in the land-for-hotels case on July 5. The agency has 90 days from the day of filing the FIR to file the charge-sheet in the case.
Prem Kumar reminded the Bihar chief minister of the time when he was with the NDA, and would remove ministers the moment any corruption charges surfaced against them.
"It is really intriguing what is making Nitishji behave differently in the case of Tejashwi," the BJP leader added.
Modi, apart from asking questions to Nitish, pointed his attack more towards Tejashwi.
"The way Tejashwi went to attend the cabinet meeting on Tuesday along with the RJD ministers, it appeared that he was trying to give a message to the chief minister that the whole RJD was with him and the chief minister could do no harm to him," the BJP leader said.
Modi also attacked the Congress - which by all indications has emerged as the mediator trying to broker peace between RJD chief Lalu Prasad and Nitish.
The BJP leader said that the Congress could not put any pressure on Lalu on the corruption issue because one of its own leaders, Virbhadra Singh, was holding the post of Himachal Pradesh chief minister even though he was facing CBI and Enforcement Directorate cases.
