Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s 72-hour deadline to his ally Lalu Prasad’s son and Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav invited more bluster from him on Wednesday even as their national ally, the Congress, signalled further support to the CM and his stated fight against corruption.
Amid raids and CBI cases against Lalu and his son, Nitish had on Tuesday asserted his “zero tolerance” against corruption.
He had also signalled his willingness to continue being part of the Grand Alliance with the Congress and Lalu’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) by pledging support to the Opposition candidate for the Vice-President post, Gopalkrishna Gandhi. This was after Nitish shook the Alliance by breaking ranks and backing the BJP’s candidate for President, Ram Nath Kovind.
The gesture was reciprocated by the Congress leadership, with both party president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi calling Nitish to thank him for the support.
Sonia phoned Nitish today while Rahul had called him on Tuesday evening after the Opposition collectively decided on Gopalkrishna Gandhi as being their Vice-President candidate.
Gopalkrishna Gandhi too called Nitish to thank him.
While the Congress clearly sent a strong message that it wanted Nitish as part of the Grand Alliance, his relations with the RJD, which has a larger number of seats in the Bihar Assembly, remained tense.
Rules out quittingTejaswi, who has been named by the CBI in an FIR against a land-for-hotels contract scam when Lalu was Railway Minister at the Centre, asserted that the charges against him are part of the BJP’s “vendetta politics”.
He also virtually ruled out resigning from the Cabinet as Nitish expects him to do.
“The FIR is part of a political vendetta. BJP president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are conspiring against me and family members out of political reasons,” he told reporters after coming out of a Cabinet meeting that Nitish had called on Wednesday morning.
“Everybody knows that they (BJP) are afraid of Laluji. But, it was not known that they are afraid of even a youth of 28 years of age,” he said.
Tejaswi pointed out that when his father was the Railway Minister, he was just 14. “Can you believe that a child of 14 years whose moustache has even not come out will indulge in corruption?” he said, dubbing the FIR as farzi (fake).
The BJP, in the meantime, mocked at Tejaswi, maintaining that his defence was “laughable”. “I cannot believe a 28-year-old man is talking such nonsense. I had had two children by the time I was 28,” said BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi.
The FIR was lodged in connection with a private party allegedly giving three acres of land in 2004 in Patna to Lalu’s family in return for obtaining the licence to run two IRCTC hotels in Ranchi and Puri when Lalu was Railway Minister.
Tejaswi’s assertion followed a prolonged meeting where Nitish had delivered a tough message to him to “come clean on accusations by explaining with facts against charges”. The message had come amid signs of a widening rift between the JD(U) and the RJD. The JD(U) made it clear that it could in no case make any compromise with Nitish’s clean image.
Protest against FIRMeanwhile, a group of people calling themselves members of “Krishna Sena” squatted on the rail tracks at Hajipur, protesting the registration of FIR against Tejaswi.
“The agitators protested from 11.15 am to 11.50 am at Hajipur station. They were removed by Railway Protection Force personnel,” said a Railway spokesman.