Senior BJP leader and former Rajya Sabha member Sushil Kumar Modi on Wednesday revealed that he was suffering from cancer and excused himself from the Lok Sabha poll campaign and the party’s election manifesto committee.

“I have been battling cancer for the past six months and felt that it is now time to tell the people about it. I will not be able to do anything in the Lok Sabha polls. I have told everything to the Prime Minister. Always grateful and dedicated to the nation, Bihar and the party,” Sushil, 72, posted on X.

Sushil’s post came just a day after his Rajya Sabha tenure ended. The BJP did not resend him to the Upper House in the recently held polls for the vacancies from Bihar and chose junior leaders Bhim Singh and Dharamshila Gupta over him.

Though he was given a place in the BJP’s 27-member Lok Sabha election manifesto committee constituted on March 30 and chaired by defence minister Rajnath Singh, the fact that he was no longer a member of any legislative or parliamentary body completed his sidelining in the party that began soon after the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections.

Sources close to Sushil said he was suffering from throat cancer, which has now spread to other parts of his body, including the lungs. He is finding it difficult to speak.

Among those who brought the BJP to power in Bihar as a part of chief minister Nitish Kumar-led NDA government, Sushil served as deputy chief minister-cum-finance minister for around 11 years.

His closeness to Nitish — both leaders have known each other since the early 1970s — had led to him being considered Nitish’s “Lakshman”.

When the NDA came to power in the state for the first time in 2005, senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi had quipped: “Nitish Kumar and Sushil Kumar Modi will be the Ram-Lakshman of Bihar politics.”

This friendship with Nitish coupled with his unshakable position in the party in Bihar irked several senior BJP leaders, some of whom had access to the central leadership in Delhi.

They plotted Sushil’s downfall by accusing him of working as Nitish’s point person and hurting the party’s interests in the state, sources said.

In between, Sushil had made one “mistake”. He had dubbed Nitish “PM material” at a time then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi was rising through the BJP ranks and had his eyes set on the Prime Minister’s post.

Modi and Union minister Amit Shah never took kindly to it and the party sidelined him soon after the 2020 Assembly elections in Bihar, dropping him from the post of deputy chief minister and choosing junior leaders over him.

He was shifted to the Rajya Sabha in December 2020 on a vacancy that had arisen because of the death of Union minister and Lok Janshakti Party founder Ram
Vilas Paswan.

Sushil, while serving as deputy chief minister-cum-finance minister of Bihar, steered the state through the turbulent waters of financial mismanagement and public debt handed over by the previous RJD regime.

His prowess on financial matters led him to be elected as the chairman of the empowered committee of state finance ministers on GST in 2011 during the UPA rule at
the Centre.