In a blistering attack on Bihar’s ruling JD(U), the state’s main Opposition BJP on Friday put the fearsome and politically injurious “jungle raj” tag on the Nitish Kumar-led government, saying most ministers and JD(U) leaders were “imported” from the RJD and the Congress.
Five days after the JD(U) unceremoniously ejected the BJP from Bihar’s seven-year-old JD(U)-BJP coalition government, the national party’s restless, hyperactive state unit chose to wield the notorious expression from the RJD era on Mr Kumar’s solo government.
BJP’s Bihar president Mangal Pandey predicted that the JD(U) government led by Mr Kumar will, in the absence of the BJP in it, push Bihar to the “jungle raj (utter failure in governance and massive rise in crime)” that prevailed in the state during the RJD’s 15-year rule.
“With most ministers in today’s JD(U) government in Bihar having been imported from the RJD and the Congress, their opinions and style of work will be essentially the same as that of the RJD and the Congress. With the BJP now out of the government, they will push Bihar once again into jungle raj,” Mr Pandey said.
On being asked why the BJP was raising this aspect of the government only after the JD(U) parted ways with it, Mr Pandey said the BJP’s participation in the Mr Kumar-led government so far was instrumental in “keeping it on the right tracks” since 2005, when the RJD rule ended.
Of the 17 ministers in Bihar’s JD(U) government currently, excluding the CM, as many as 10 are those who defected to the JD(U) from the RJD or /and Congress. They are Shyam Razak, Brishen Patel, Ramai Ram, Bhim Singh, Jitan Ram Manjhi, Shahid Ali Khan, Vijay Chaudhary, Nitish Mishra, Narendra Singh and Awadhesh Kushwaha.