Bihar animal and fish resources minister Giriraj Singh and other members of the BJP perform a havan in support of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s fast, in Patna on Sunday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Sept. 18: The JD(U) and the BJP — the two partners of the ruling NDA in Bihar — today sang in contrasting tunes on Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s fast for “peace and communal harmony”.

Nitish’s two cabinet colleagues, Ashwini Kumar Choubey and Prem Kumar of the BJP, rushed to the Gujarat University ground in Ahmedabad to accompany Modi on fast. Another BJP minister, Giriraj Singh, performed havan here and sang paeans for Modi for making Gujarat what he describes as a “heaven” on the earth.

The state BJP chief, C.P. Thakur, and Patna Sahib MP Shatrughan Sinha have also rushed to Ahmedabad.

On the other hand, the JD(U) national general secretary, Shivanand Tiwary, was acerbic on Modi. “How can the man (Narendra Modi) who failed to follow raj dharma with five crore people of the state deliver justice to over 125 crore people of India?” Tiwary asked. “People of Gujarat are still in the grip of fear and insecurity,” he added.

Besides Tiwary, several other senior JD(U) leaders criticised Modi’s fast. Chief minister Nitish Kumar has so far maintained silence on the issue, though.

Senior JD(U) minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary described Narendra Modi as “irrelevant” to Bihar’s scheme of things.

“It (Modi’s fast) is irrelevant to us. The fast concerns only Narendra Modi. We have nothing to do with that,” Choudhary said.

The state party chief, Basishtha Narayan Singh, said: “We are not interested in his (Modi’s) fast. What he is doing has nothing to do with the NDA in Bihar.”

If, anything, the JD(U) leaders’ bitter remarks on the much-vaunted three-day fast of Modi is believed to reflect Nitish’s “abhorrence” to his Gujarat counterpart. The observers believe that Nitish — an undeclared rival of Modi at the national level — will hardly like his cabinet colleagues to join Modi on fast or performing havan in solidarity with the fast which his party finds “irrelevant”.

A senior JD(U) leader said: “Nitish will not mind Thakur or Shatrughan attending the Gujarat chief minister’s fast because they are the BJP’s functionaries. But he will hardly like his colleagues in the government (ministers) going out of way to join Modi’s campaign.”

The sources in the NDA, however, ruled out any immediate threat to the JD(U)-BJP alliance in the state, but they did not rule out Nitish objecting strongly to his ministerial colleagues doing something that disturbs Bihar NDA’s agenda and Nitish’s way of functioning.

A JD(U) minister pointed out that his ministerial colleagues should understand that the BJP leadership had to stomach the Bihar chief minister’s snub to Modi and agree to work with him in the state keeping him (Modi) out of Bihar’s scheme of things.

“They (the BJP ministers) should take notice of the fact that Nitish has never allowed Narendra Modi to campaign in Bihar. Why are they joining Modi’s political ventures that do not suit either Nitish’s political philosophy or his way of functioning,” a JD(U) minister said.

The fact remains that Giriraj, who performed havan in Modi’s favour at the Kargil Chowk here, and Choubey, who went to join Modi on the Gujarat University campus, had openly spoken against Nitish when the latter denied dinner to his Gujarat counterpart and had returned the flood relief fund ahead of the 2010 Assembly elections.

Nitish is believed to strongly feel that even his remote association with Modi would distance the Muslims from the NDA in Bihar and so he would seldom like his ministers to do something that antagonises the Muslims he had nursed so painstakingly.