Chief minister Nitish Kumar and Union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde at the state hangar in Patna on Tuesday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, June 25: Union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde today described chief minister Nitish Kumar as a good human being and emphasised the unity of secular forces, indicating the Congress and the JD(U) were inching closer to each other.

“Whenever there is talk of secularism or a secular state, Congress is with it. It’s the duty of secular forces to assist each other,” Shinde said, adding that casteism and communal forces cannot run the country. “Only secular institutions can run the nation,” he said in a veiled attack on the BJP.

Nitish was present at the airport when Shinde spoke, but they were not together. The duo later flew together to Supaul bordering Nepal to lay the foundation stone of a recruitment training centre of Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and start work on a 552km Indo-Nepal border road.

Recalling his old association with Nitish, Shinde said: “When I was an MP, he (Nitish) was the railway minister. He had visited my constituency then.” Shinde, as an All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary, was the in charge of the party’s Bihar affairs for four years.

Ever since four Congress MLAs voted in favour of the JD(U) during the June 19 trust vote, speculation is rife about a future relationship between the Congress and the JD(U). Shinde’s praise for Nitish is being seen as a step towards that direction. Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Nand Kishore Yadav said: “It is natural for Shinde to praise Nitishji. Nobody expected him to praise us (BJP).”

Yadav in his maiden speech in the Assembly as the Leader of the Opposition indicated that Nitish’s love for the Congress was not sudden. “Nitishji was giving indications about his tilt towards the Congress right from 2009,” he had said in his speech.

The BJP leaders now recall that Nitish had given a lift to Union finance minister P. Chidambaram to Sadaquat Ashram — the state Congress headquarters — at least three months before the JD(U)-BJP split was officially announced. “We should have taken the hint then,” said a BJP leader.

The state Congress leaders are of the opinion that the party high command is not averse to a tie-up with the JD(U) in the future. The appointment of senior party leader C.P. Joshi as the AICC’s Bihar in-charge goes in favour of Nitish, said a Congress leader.

Like Shinde, Joshi also has an old association with Nitish and is trusted by the AICC chief, Sonia Gandhi.