Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar (extreme left) offers a chadar at Khanequah-e-Mujibia in Phulwari Sharif on Prophet Mohammad’s birth anniversary on Wednesday. Picture by J Prakash

Patna, Feb. 16: Nitish Kumar today refused to buy Manmohan Singh’s defence about the “limitations of coalition politics”, saying the Prime Minister should go to the electorate instead of “succumbing” to undue pressure from the alliance partners.

“No compromise should have been made on the issue of corruption which has driven the people across the country to rage,” the chief minister told reporters. “If the Prime Minister feels that certain allies are pressuring him to gain unlawful favour, he should go to the people and reveal the allies’ designs.”

Reacting to the Prime Minister expressing his “helplessness” with regard to former telecom minister A. Raja or certain ministers recommended by the alliance partners, Nitish said: “He (Singh) should not have formed the government if he was unable to prevent the allies from recommending names of corrupt persons for ministers. Rather, he should have gone to the people on the issue.”

At an interaction with television editors today, Singh deliberated on the “limitations of coalition politics” and how compromises were part of the coalition dharma.

Nitish himself has been running a coalition government which returned to power for the second consecutive term in last year’s Assembly elections. The chief minister has so far not allowed his ally, the BJP, to put him under pressure on any issue. Rather, he has brought the alliance to the brink on certain occasions by vehemently attacking the BJP’s star leaders Narendra Modi and Varun Gandhi.

Though Nitish has so far not been confronted with any scandal involving any minister either from his party or his ally’s, he made it evidently clear while striking the alliance with the BJP that he would make no compromise with it on the issue of communalism. Thus far, he appears to have stuck to his guns by not tolerating even the semblance of deviation from the BJP on the issue.

Of late, the chief minister has launched a campaign against corruption, bringing out several legislations like the right to service act, special courts act and making it mandatory for officials across levels to declare their assets.

The JD(U) last week adopted a resolution saying that everyone holding positions of power, including high court and Supreme Court judges, should be brought under the ambit of declaring their assets. “The people must know about the public money being spent on public servants, whosoever they are,” Nitish said.

“Scandal after scandal has been hitting the nation. The central government is not taking any effective step to put a check on this. It is a grim situation which will require the intervention of the electorate,” the chief minister said.

Nitish, however, expressed his happiness with the Centre for approving the annual plan size of Rs 24,000 crore to Bihar.