Bihar chief minister and JD(U) stalwart Nitish Kumar’s ingenious decision to spruce up his secular image in poll-bound Bihar by returning the Rs 5-crore Kosi flood aid money back to the Gujarat government on Saturday drew flak from all political parties barring the JD(U) and the intelligentsia.
RJD leader and Kumar’s arch rival Lalu Prasad Yadav, relishing the new strains in the JD(U)-BJP alliance in Bihar, launched the most scathing attacks on Kumar for a move that was widely described across the state as a “secularism stunt”. LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan, the RJD’s ally and now a Rajya Sabha member, dubbed the exercise of returning the aide money “drama”. The Congress, too, fired equally caustic criticism.
“If he (Mr Kumar) was truly secular, should have chopped off his hand and thrown it down the Ganges after shaking hands with Narendra Modi last year instead of indulging in this secularism stunt. The Rs 5 crores did not come from Modi’s pocket. It is the money of Gujarat’s people. Returning that money is an insulting act,” said Mr Yadav to reporters at his residence.
Mr Paswan said the whole exercise of returning the aide money to Gujarat was just a drama aimed at collecting Muslim votes. “Was Narendra Modi not communal when his government had given this money to Bihar? This move, like all previous ones by Nitish Kumar, only exposes his double face,” said Mr Paswan.
“Is the photograph in which he (Kumar) is seen with Modi wrong? I will resign if it is wrong. Kumar should explain why he did not resign from his ministership in NDA government after the post-Godhra communal clashes during Narendra Modi’s rule in Gujarat. I was also a minister in NDA government, but I immediately resigned protesting Modi’s role in post-Godhra carnage,” thundered Mr Paswan, adding that Mr Kumar, as the railway minister in 2002, had even “tried to hide facts during the inquiry into Godhra train fire case”.
The RJD-LJP combine and the Congress in Bihar asked Mr Kumar and the JD(U) to snap ties with the BJP or to merge the ruling regional party with the saffron national party.