The beginning of Bihar’s four-day religious festival of Chhath brought bad news for the state’s Opposition parties RJD and LJP on Sunday as two of their leaders decided to join the ruling JD(U) in the latest episode of an ongoing political migration process.
While the LJP’s Rajya Sabha member Sabir Ali reportedly resigned from the party and said he would join the JD(U) on November 13, former RJD MLA Uday Manjhi joined the JD(U) in a formal ceremony attended by the state’s senior ruling party’s state president Vashisth Narayan Singh and Rajya Sabha member R.C.P. Singh.
With these defections, the two main Opposition parties are likely to heighten their charges that chief minister and JD(U) stalwart Nitish Kumar was still carrying on a poaching spree to weaken other parties. Several leaders from the RJD and LJP have quit to join the JD(U) in recent months, prompting the two parties to allege that the defections were engineered by Mr Kumar.
In July, all the three MLCs of the LJP quit and joined the JD(U), but the party led by prominent dalit leader and former Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan, now a Rajya Sabha member, managed to stop its three revolting MLCs from joining the JD(U) a week later.
Mr Ali, a long-time rebel within the LJP, had resigned from the post of the party’s vice-president on October 14, after mounting scathing attack on the leadership style of Mr Paswan and showering praise on Nitish Kumar. He reportedly resigned from the party’s primary membership on Sunday and announced his plans to join the JD(U) on November 13. The CM is likely to personally induct Mr Ali into the JD(U).
For Mr Manjhi, it is a second “homecoming” because he had contested the 2005 Assembly polls Phulwarisharif constituency near Patna as a JD(U) candidate and then contested the 2009 bypoll in the same constituency as an RJD candidate. JD(U) state president Vashisth Narayan Singh said Mr Manjhi’s “homecoming would further strengthen” the ruling party.