Digvijay Singh (left) and Prabhunath Singh in Patna on Tuesday. (Deepak Kumar)

Patna, Jan. 19: Senior JD(U) leader and former MP Prabhunath Singh chose the birth anniversary of Maharana Pratap today to launch a rebellion of upper caste Rajputs against the Nitish Kumar government.

The don-turned-politician, who faces numerous criminal cases against him, succeeded in organising a fairly good show of strength in favour of expelled party leader and MP Digvijay Singh. About half-a-dozen Rajput legislators and ministers from the Nitish government attended the gathering, largely made up of Rajputs.

Prabhunath and Digvijay questioned the “all-inclusive” politics of the Bihar chief minister. “Nitish has been initiating many schemes for the extremely backward castes (EBCs) and maha-Dalits which is not bad,” Digvijay, who won the Jamui Lok Sabha seat as a rebel candidate, said, adding, “but he has ignored the poor among other castes.”

Nitish, they said, should have identified the poor among upper castes, too, to justify what he termed as all-inclusive politics.

“The chief minister has been dividing society by excluding maha-Dalits from the Dalit community and pasmandas from the Muslim community from his benevolence,” said Prabhunath.

Digvijay described the “impressive gathering” today as a “sign of political change taking” place in Bihar. “Nitish must read the writing on the wall, for his politics based on dividing society will be rejected by the people,” he said.

In fact, Prabhunath has been nursing a grudge against Nitish ever since his defeat from Maharajganj, a north Bihar Lok Sabha constituency, in the last polls. The former JD(U) parliamentary party leader wanted the party leadership to make him a Rajya Sabha MP after his defeat.

But Nitish opted for ailing George Fernandes for the Upper House of Parliament, angering Prabhunath, who recently wrote a letter to the chief minister telling him how the “interests of the upper castes” were being undermined in the party.

In fact, there is a strong feeling in the Prabhunath camp and a section of leaders that the upper castes, miffed at Lalu Prasad’s “backward class politics” supported Nitish to help him come to power in 2005. But Nitish, according to them, has been “doling sops” to the EBCs and maha-Dalits at the cost of the “poor” among the upper castes.

They felt the chief minister has been marginalising the upper caste leadership in his quest to broaden his constituency among the maha-Dalits and the EBCs.

Among Nitish’s MLA’s and ministers who participated in the meet were Narendra Singh, Abhay Singh, Jaikumar Singh, Rampravesh Rai.

Diprendra Singh Kushwaha, the Speaker of the Rajasthan Assembly and a Rajput chieftain, was also present.