Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar lambasted the Rashtriya Janata Dal on Sunday for “keeping the state behind”, appearing to scotch the swirling speculation about another political somersault following Lalu Prasad’s recent offer to him to join hands against the BJP.
“You must understand every single thing. Was the condition of women like this earlier? I went with them (the RJD) twice by mistake, but now we are with my old friends (NDA),” the Janata Dal United leader said in reply to reporters’ queries.
Nitish, who had been avoiding the media for the past couple of years and also during his ongoing Pragati Yatra — an election-year exercise to establish a mass connect — had suddenly chosen to interact with journalists during a halt at Muzaffarpur.
This at a time when the whole of Bihar was agog over whether he was considering Lalu’s offer and might quit the NDA.
The chief minister indicated his mind by dusting off the old complaints about the years of RJD rule being a dark age of lawlessness and lack of development.
“Did they (RJD) do anything for women? Did people (dare) go out after sundown? We worked for everybody — for men, women, for all castes, Hindus, Muslims, upper castes, backward castes, extremely backward, Dalits, Mahadalits. Please bear these things in mind,” he said.
Lalu had on Thursday asserted that his doors were always open for Nitish and invited him back to the Mahagathbandhan fold.
Asked about it the same evening, Nitish had only smiled and made cryptic replies, leading to conjecture that he might be planning another of his famous U-turns ahead of the Assembly elections, expected towards the end of the year.
His latest remarks appeared an attempt to lay all that speculation at rest.
On Saturday, too, while conducting a review meeting of government schemes at Gopalganj, Nitish had emphasised that he had “gone here and there twice by mistake” but would now work together (as part of the NDA) for the development of the country
and Bihar.
Nitish had underlined that after he started the Jeevika Didi scheme for women’s self-help groups as part of the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project, the Centre had adopted it as the Aajeevika programme under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission.
Lalu’s younger son and leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, hit back at Nitish from East Champaran, where he had halted during a tour of the state to interact with party workers and supporters.
“We did more work in every field during the 17 months of our Mahagathbandhan government (with Nitish as chief minister) than what Nitish Kumar did in 20 years (as part of the NDA),” he said.
“Exam paper leaks are coming to light every day and the students protesting it are being thrashed by the police. The chief minister is keeping quiet on such an important issue.”
Nitish and his JDU had joined hands with the RJD twice -- between 2015 and 2017, and then from August 2022 to January 2024. Both tie-ups ended with Nitish scampering back to the NDA to form fresh ministries, replacing the Mahagathbandhan governments.
