Nitish Kumar’s run-in with minister & his waning authority in the coalition

Waning authority

• The chief minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, who has been at the helm of affairs for nearly two decades was left red in the face at a recent cabinet meeting. The state agriculture minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader, Sudhakar Singh, has been openly talking about the deep-rooted corruption in his department, which is responsible for the economic distress of the state’s farmers. At the meeting, Singh claimed that the agriculture department was full of thieves and, by virtue of holding that portfolio, he ought to be the ‘sardar’ of thieves. When Kumar suggested that Singh should not say such things in public, he enraged the RJD leader so much that Singh threatened to resign from his post and stomped out of the meeting. A miffed Kumar then had no option but to ring the RJD chief, Lalu Prasad, to complain about the minister’s behaviour. Singh later asserted that he will keep pointing out the ills and working to improve the department as he has become a minister owing to the blessings of Prasad and his son and Bihar deputy CM, Tejashwi Yadav. The episode has left many wondering about Kumar’swaning authority within the coalition. After all, his party, the Janata Dal (United), has just 45 members compared to the RJD’s 79 in the state legislative assembly.

Perfect glue

• Nitish Kumar’s woes know no end. He is at the receiving end of caustic remarks from all quarters. The poll strategist, Prashant Kishor, attacked the Bihar CM recently by saying, “He has done six political experiments in the last 15 years, and only one thing has been constant in all of them —that he has remained the chief minister. I will tell Fevicol [a glue manufacturing company] to have him as its brand ambassador,”Kishor said. This was seen as a response to Kumar’s dismissal of Kishor’splan of taking a plunge into active politics. While people waited with bated breath for a battle to ensue,Kishor surprised everyone by paying a visit to Kumar and speaking to him for two hours in the presence of the former Rajya Sabha member, Pavan K Varma. As news of their meeting became public, the two leaders justified it in their own ways, while leaving enough gaps for speculation. “Both of them have worked together previously. It seems their bond is better than Fevicol,” a political pundit quipped, suggesting that the glue-making company should have both of them as its brand ambassadors because they tend to stick together despite all odds.

Rich rewards

• Hard work and devotion always pay off. The recently-retired additional chief secretary of the Uttar Pradesh home department, Awanish Awasthi — the most trusted lieutenant of the UP CM, Yogi Adityanath— has been rewarded with the post of the CM’s advisor. According to an official notification, Awasthi will advise the CM on administrative issues and stay on in the position till February 28, 2023. During his tenure as a bureaucrat, Awasthi would manage Adityanath’s affairs, including his morning rituals, and fix his daily schedules. Rumour has it that Awasthi was so devoted to the CM that he ignored his own health, skipped his lunch and survived mostly on bananas.

Mirror image

• The Delhi CM and Aam Aadmi Party leader, Arvind Kejriwal, recently dined with an auto driver at the latter’s home in Ahmedabad after receiving an invitation during an election rally. Kejriwal had also had dinner at an auto driver’s home in Ludhiana while campaigning for the Punjab assembly elections last year. The youth Congress president, BV Srinivas, tweeted videos of the two instances of Kejriwal dining with the auto drivers, insinuating that the sequences were almost identical. On the other hand, sensing the AAP’srhetoric, the Bharatiya Janata Party wasted no time in sending its member of parliament, Manoj Tiwari, to Surat to interact with auto drivers.

Heroic act

• The Hindi film, Nayak, in which the protagonist is made CM for a day during which he tries to solve people’s problems promptly, seems to have inspired the Union minister of railways, Ashwini Vaishnaw, who attempted something similar during his recent visit to a village in Puri. When the villagers of Birapratappur near Chandanpur drew Vaishnaw’s attention to the problems that they were facing as a result of railway tracks passing through the village, Vaishnaw came to their rescue at once. He directed his officials to construct a foot over bridge at the spot with ramp facilities.Vaishnaw also interacted with the villagers and sought to know about other predicaments ailing them. This led to locals recallingVaishnaw’s stint as the collector of Balasore and Cuttack districts, when he had taken similarly prompt administrative action and helped mitigate the sufferings of the victims of the super cyclone that had hit the coastal belt in 1999.

Footnote

The Congress leader and member of the Kerala legislative assembly, Ramesh Chennithala, has reportedly said that it was he who had suggested that Rahul Gandhi should undertake a Kanyakumari-to-Kashmir walkathon to rebuild the party. The former leader of the Opposition in the state has gone quiet over the past year since the post was given to a much younger VD Satheesan. Chennithala has been trying to rebuild his own image ever since and is now banking on the yatra for whatever little leverage he can derive from it.