Ajay Alok has quit as Janata Dal United (JDU) spokesperson after being hauled up by party seniors for criticising chief minister Mamata Banerjee and calling Bengal a “mini Pakistan”.
Sources said the resignation was a fallout of the fluid political situation. Given the love-hate relationship between the JDU and the BJP, Nitish Kumar’s party would want to keep all options open.
Mamata and Nitish had for long enjoyed cordial relations, but the ties soured after the Bihar chief minister supported demonetisation while she opposed it.
Recently, Trinamul hired the services of poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who is also a JDU national vice-president, for the 2021 Assembly polls.
Alok, one of JDU’s most visible and suave faces, sent his resignation letter to the party’s Bihar unit chief, Vashishtha Narayan Singh, on Thursday. “I feel I am not doing a good job for the party,” he wrote.
Speaking to the media recently, Alok had accused Mamata of “converting Bengal into a mini-Pakistan”. He also alleged that people from Bihar who were living in Bengal were being beaten up and driven away, “not by the Bengalis, but by the Rohingya”.
After Mamata praised the JDU’s decision to go it alone in the upcoming Assembly elections in Jharkhand, Delhi, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir, Alok had rebuffed her, suggesting that she should mind her own business.
Alok tweeted: “I have resigned as a spokesperson from JDU as I think I am not doing a good job as my views which are mine of course, do not match with my party. Thanks to my party and my president who has always supported me and I don’t want to be a source of embarrassment for @NitishKumar.” He clarified that he remained in the party.
Although the resignation is yet to be accepted, a senior JDU leader said Alok had been pulled up for some of his recent statements. He cited Alok’s claim that BSF officers were letting Rohingya refugees into India after taking money from them and that Mamata had turned Bengal into a mini-Pakistan.
“The BSF is directly under the Union home ministry and questioning it means also questioning the efficiency and competence of Union home minister Amit Shah. The BJP is our ally. Similarly, terming a state in our own country as mini-Pakistan was extremely derogatory. Alok was admonished and asked to think before speaking,” the leader added.
Asked about his resignation, Alok said he chose to do so because his “comments were not in line with the party. However, I am still a member of the JDU”.
However, Alok made polarising and communal comments similar to those made by Bengal BJP leaders on the hospital stand-off.
JDU secretary general K.C. Tyagi refused to comment.
The bitterness between the BJP and the JDU once again came out in the open when BJP leader Rameshwar Chaurasia said on Friday that the Nitish-led government had failed on the law and order front.
Tyagi, on the other hand, declared that the JDU would oppose the instant triple talaq bill that has been approved by the Union cabinet.
