Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), which bore the brunt of Chirag Paswan’s brinkmanship in the assembly polls last year, on Monday said the LJP president was reaping what he had sown.
JD(U) national president RCP Singh reacted with a sense of vindication to the developments in the party founded by late Ram Vilas Paswan, whose son has been left cornered in a revolt led by the former’s younger brother Pashupati Kumar Paras and supported by four other MPs, including nephew Prince Raj.
“It is a well-known adage that as you sow, so you reap. Chirag Paswan was heading a party which was with the NDA. Yet, he adopted a stance that damaged it in the assembly polls. This led to a sense of unease within his own party,” Singh told reporters here. Chirag Paswan had opened a front against Nitish Kumar in the elections, fielding nominees against all JD(U) candidates, many of them rebels from the BJP. He had claimed that he wanted to help the saffron party form its own government in the state where the people yearned for a change in leadership.
The JD(U) chief also remarked that Chirag was “too young” and had failed to keep his flock together in the LJP, which owed its current standing, in a large measure, to “efforts put in by Pashupati Kumar Paras and Ram Chandra Paswan (Prince Raj’s late father)”. Singh, however, parried queries as to whether the rebel LJP MPs would be welcome if they expressed the wish to join JD(U).
“Many formalities are to be completed. The five MPs who have revolted need to be notified as an independent group by the Lok Sabha Speaker. They have already stated they will remain in the NDA. “In any case, in Bihar NDA, it is only the BJP and our party. Whichever party they join, they will be with us,” he said.
Meanwhile, JD(U) also parried questions on speculations that a large number of Congress MLAs were planning to jump ship. JD(U) national president RCP Singh, however, remarked that the Congress was like a sinking ship and hence it may continue to suffer desertions as it has done in the past.
Singh was replying to queries on reports in a section of the media here that at least 13 MLAs of the Congress, which has a total strength of 19, were planning to walk over to JD (U). The party had suffered a split in three years ago when its former state president Ashok Choudhary walked over to the JD(U) along with some other legislators. Choudhary has since risen to prominence in JD(U), as the partys working state president during the assembly polls, and is seen as one of the trusted cabinet colleagues of the Chief Minister.
When pressed about the possibility of Congress MLAs in Bihar switching sides in the foreseeable future, Singh shot back we shall cross the bridge when it comes.
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