Patna, May 19: The NDA partners’ efforts to cool things down after their recent war of words seem to have suffered double blows, thanks to chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi and Darbhanga’s BJP MP Kirti Azad.
The Gujarat chief minister took an indirect dig at his Bihar counterpart in Chhattisgarh on Saturday.
While praising Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh in Rajnandgaon at the end of the second phase of the latter’s Vikas Yatra, Modi remarked “some chief ministers have had to cancel visits in their own states after being shown black flags and having stones pelted at them”.
Modi was apparently referring to Nitish’s Adhikar Rally last year. He was shown black flags at over half-a-dozen places. There was violence in Khagaria and he had to cancel his visit to Saran after violence in Madhubani.
In contrast, Raman, despite ruling Chhattisgarh for nine-and-a-half years, always got a rousing reception everywhere he went, Modi rubbed it in. He further said that only the BJP had challenged the “prevailing vote-bank politics” in the country. The JD(U) leaders were obviously livid after the development. “People should check facts before making statements,” JD(U)’s state spokesperson Sanjay Singh said. The Dal leaders expect more such “indirect hits” from Modi against Nitish in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls. “It will put the alliance under further strain,” said a senior JD(U) leader.
The BJP leaders, on the other hand, justified Modi’s statement, pointing out that Nitish himself began the slanging match by taking regular digs at Modi without taking names. “Nitish is being paid back in his own coin,” a BJP leader said. If the alliance weathers Modi’s indirect attacks, it has cricketer-turned-MP Kirti Azad’s direct attacks to contend with. Azad dubbed Nitish Kumar’s Seva Yatra a “Helicopter Yatra”. The JD(U) hit back saying Azad should have continued playing cricket instead of entering politics.
The confrontation began on Saturday during a meeting convened to review development schemes in Darbhanga. Azad had just started speaking on waterlogging problems in the town when Nitish asked him to shut up and observe the proceedings.
The stunned MP shouted back that he (Azad) had been called to the meeting and as a public representative it was his right to raise issues related to his constituency. “It was unfortunate. But I was stopped from speaking and I had no other option than to react the way I did,” Azad said.
Azad’s supporters said Nitish snubbed the Darbhanga MP so as to promote former MLC Sanjay Jha as a Lok Sabha candidate from the constituency in the 2014 polls. Asking an elected MP to keep quiet in front of officials is an insult and Azad was justified in shouting back, a senior BJP leader said. The BJP leaders further said MPs and MLAs are regularly insulted at review meetings where the chief secretary and senior officials sit on the stage with Nitish, while elected members are made to sit where the audience sits.
Public health and engineering minister Chandra Mohan Rai (of the BJP) called the Azad incident unfortunate and said it would widen the BJP-JD(U) rift. Darbhanga politicians pointed out that Azad had, in the past, publicly spoken about rampant corruption in the government welfare projects.
“With incidents like Modi’s statement and the Nitish-Kirti face-off happening on the same day, it lies to be seen how much longer this alliance can survive,” a BJP minister said.
