Union home minister Amit Shah on Sunday lashed out at Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, reminding him that the ‘INDIA’ alliance did not name him the convenor of the opposition bloc.
“”These are people running family shops, one wants to become the Prime Minister and the other wants to make his son the Chief Minister. I want to tell both of that Nitish Kumar forget about the PM post the INDI alliance did not make you the convener. You don’t belong anywhere…”, Shah said at a rally in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur.
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Continuing his attack on the Bihar chief minister,”There are two types of ‘JAM’. For BJP, JAM – Jan Dhan account, Aadhaar and Mobile. For the Bihar government, JAM – ‘Jativad’ and ‘Parivarvad’, ‘Apradh’, and Minority appeasement”.
“The alliance partners call themselves the well-wishers of backward classes… The decision to conduct the survey was taken when the BJP was a part of Nitish Kumar’s government…Congress always boycotted and opposed the backward society. Whereas PM Modi always respected the backward society”, ANI quoted Shah as saying.
The Bihar government released the caste-based survey data last month, which showed that the other backward classes (OBCs) together constitute a staggering 63 per cent of the state’s total population. The extremely backward classes formed the largest social segment.
“…The INDI alliance has only one agenda to oppose PM Modi. When they were in power they did corruption amounting to ₹12 Lakh crore…”, the home minister added.
Last year, Nitish Kumar dumped the BJP as its alliance partner for the second time in nine years. He reunited with friend-turned-foe-turned-friend Rashtriya Janata Dal to continue in power.
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Nitish’s love-hate relationship with BJP
The 72-year-old leader’s love-hate relationship with the saffron party dates back to the 1990s when he and George Fernandes had launched the Samata Party in 1994.
In the 1996 Lok Sabha election, the Samata Party joined hands with the BJP and won eight seats. Six of these seats were from Bihar while the party won a seat each from Uttar Pradesh and Odisha.
In the 1998 general elections, the Samata Party increased its tally to 12, ten of which came from Bihar and two from UP.
In the 2000 Bihar elections, Nitish Kumar from the Samata Party was picked as the leader of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the state and took oath as the CM for the first time. But he could not manage to prove his majority in the assembly and had to resign.
Nitish Kumar, however, served as a minister in the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In 2003, the Samata Party merged with the Janata Dal (United).
In the 2005 Bihar elections, the JD(U) and BJP alliance ended the RJD’s 15-year-long rule. Nitish became the chief minister and led the alliance to a bigger victory in the 2010 polls.
However, the alliance was fraught with tensions between Nitish and Narendra Modi, who was then the Gujarat chief minister. The JD(U) leader announced the split with BJP in 2013 after the saffron party appointed Modi as its campaign committee chief.
In the 2015 Bihar election, Nitish Kumar and RJD swept the polls and came to power again. However, the alliance broke in 2017 after RJD chief Lalu Prasad refused to ask his son and then deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav to resign in a corruption case.
