Barely seven days after the split, the war of words has begun with the JD(U) and BJP spitting venom against each other.
On Monday, chief minister Nitish Kumar chose to keep mum but his silence was preceded by a veiled threat to the national party. “If I open my mouth, a lot of BJP leaders will be in trouble,” he said on the sidelines of a programme in the city.
Reacting to Nitish, BJP president Rajnath Singh told reporters just hours later: “We have fulfilled the Bihar chief minister’s prediction. He had said a decade ago that Modi’s services are required by the country.” He referred to a 2003 programme in Kutch where Nitish, as railway minister, had heaped praise on Modi.
Rajnath also made fun of Nitish’s statement that the possibility of realigning with the BJP has been “switched off”.
“I am yet to see a switch which does not have an ‘on’ button along with an ‘off’ mode,” he said. He clarified that, right now, the NDA has no proposal for expansion. “But there is pre-poll alliance and post-poll alliance,” he said.
Addressing the BJP workers’ meeting on Sunday, Rajnath had lambasted Nitish’s criticism of Modi as autocratic and also slammed his new-found love for the Congress.
Nitish’s “threat” to speak out is being viewed as an indication that he no longer wants to be on the backfoot. Since Nitish has no problem with the BJP’s state unit, he has so far sounded apologetic about the split. When the Assembly was convened on June 19 for the JD(U) to prove its majority, the first gesture Nitish made was to walk up to the BJP’s bench and greet them.
However, the former allies face a problem when it comes to attacking each other as they have been together for over 17 years as friends and have been in power for more than seven years in the state. “Leaders of both parties know too much about each other and revelations made by any one party will be followed by counter-attacks,” said a veteran leader.
Not surprisingly, till now while the BJP has focused on “betrayal”, the JD(U) has stuck to the issue of Modi’s elevation in the party.
Rajnath on Monday warned Opposition leaders against the Congress’s trap of what he called “secularitis”.
“There is a disease called secularitis from which the Congress and its allies are suffering as they have been trying to create a divide on the lines of secularism and communalism in the country. Our country must be saved from it,” he said. He also had a message for Nitish. “All I would like to tell the Bihar chief minister is to guard against falling in the trap of the Congress which wants to divide the polity on communal versus secular lines,” he said.
However, the JD(U) has started charging the BJP leaders of using “unparliamentary” words. “The BJP leaders have no right to refer to our party as a party of borrowed players. After all, senior BJP leaders like C.P. Thakur and Yashwant Sinha, too, have come from other parties,” said JD(U) national spokesperson Devesh Chandra Thakur, stressing that Nitish had never claimed that development of Bihar was due to him and had always given credit to the people of the state.
