Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Friday reminded the Narendra Modi government that the country is governed according to the Constitution and any deviation would be met with questions, adding that the people “will take care of those misusing central agencies”.
Fresh in the national Opposition fold after severing ties with the BJP-led NDA, the Janata Dal United leader told reporters in Patna: “The country is governed in keeping with the Constitution. There are constitutional provisions laying down what the Centre has to do and what are the rights of the states. The share of the states in the tax collection is also fixed. If there is any problem in this, you will have to be answerable for that.”
Nitish asserted that the people “will take care of those who are misusing central agencies like the CBI or the Enforcement Directorate (ED)”.
The chief minister was interacting with journalists on the sidelines of “Save Tree Day”, celebrated in Bihar every year on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan.
Although Nitish did not elaborate on where the Centre had strayed from constitutional provisions, one of his close aides said the unilateral decisions of the Union government had caused resentment among states and were pushing them towards financial instability.
“The tradition of holding consultations with the states on important economic matters is no longer being followed. The Centre’s share in centrally sponsored schemes is being unilaterally changed, the methods of tax devolutions are being arbitrarily decided. The states are being taken for granted and there seems to be a concerted attempt to do away with the federal structure of the country,” the Nitish aide said.
“Take the example of the recent governing council meeting of the Niti Aayog chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Earlier, the states were allowed to speak freely, submit memorandums on their demands and grievances. But this time the Centre gave a few options or subjects and asked each state to choose any one to speak on. This was like a gag order, an attempt to fix the agenda of the states,” the aide told The Telegraph.
Nitish did not attend the Niti Aayog meeting held on August 7 and exited the NDA a couple of days later. On August 10, he took oath as chief minister for the eighth time — this time as the leader of the Grand Alliance that also has the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Congress, Left parties and the Hindustani Awam Morcha Secular.
On Friday, Nitish once again emphasised the need for Opposition unity in the country and said he would work towards it after attending to the immediate concerns of Bihar.
“It will be good if we all work together for the people. We want everybody to come together. I will make efforts to bring all the Opposition parties together. I will first finish the work here (in Bihar) and then focus on it,” he said.
The chief minister said many Opposition leaders from all over the country were calling him up to discuss a wider unity.
Asked whether he could be the Opposition’s prime ministerial candidate in 2024, Nitish said with folded hands that he had “no such wish”. He said he did not even want to become chief minister after the 2020 Assembly elections.
“The BJP betrayed us in the elections. The winning JDU candidates said it (BJP) did not help them even a bit in the polls, while the losing candidates said that it worked against them,” Nitish said.
The JDU has come up with a 40-seat plan to defeat the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
JDU national president Rajiv Ranjan Singh aka Lalan Singh said the BJP now had 303 seats in the Lok Sabha and would not be able to form the government in 2024 if it loses 40 seats in the next general election.
“We just need to subtract 40 seats from the BJP’s tally. We are going to achieve this with the help of just three states — Bihar, Jharkhand and Bengal. The BJP will be out of power,” Lalan said.
The three states account for a total of 96 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP won 46 of them in the 2019 polls. However, with Nitish’s rebellion and Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee vanquishing the BJP in the Assembly polls last year, an encore could be difficult in 2024.
The JDU national president met RJD chief Lalu Prasad in Delhi on Thursday. “I have taken blessings from him to uproot the BJP in the next general election,” Lalan said.