New Delhi/Patna, Nov 11 The Janata Dal (United) on Wednesday expressed resentment over the portrayal of its president and former Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar in Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s memoir, asserting that he was the main architect of the opposition INDIA bloc.
While JD(U) national spokesperson Rajeev Ranjan Prasad alleged that Gandhi has presented the entire episode in her book as part of a strategy to mislead people, the party’s working president Sanjay Kumar Jha alleged the former Congress chief made “petty and frivolous” remarks against Kumar, which was “unexpected”.
“The JD(U) is deeply aggrieved by the way Nitish Kumar has been mentioned in Sonia Gandhi’s book in the context of the INDIA bloc. We believe that Nitish Kumar is the architect and driving force behind the INDIA bloc, which is currently being led by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi,” he said in a video statement.
In her memoir “Belonging: A Journey of Love”, Gandhi has written that Kumar was looking for an opportunity to exit the INDIA bloc and was under the BJP’s influence. She also refers to his return to the NDA in early 2024.
Prasad claimed that most regional parties were initially reluctant to include the Congress in the opposition alliance and Kumar had persuaded them to come together with the grand old party.
“The first meeting of the alliance in Patna was subsequently successful,” he said.
Prasad said Kumar eventually realised that the INDIA bloc would not work due to the ambitions and regional political interests of the Congress and its allies, as well as their inability to take on the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
“The role of the Congress and its allies, their ambitions and regional political interests made it clear that they did not have the capacity to take on the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). That is why Nitish Kumar left the INDIA bloc,” he said.
In Patna, Jha said, “She is a senior leader. One did not expect such petty and frivolous remarks from her. But it seems to have become a trait of all senior leaders of the Congress. Just recall what (Mallikarjun) Kharge had said recently,” the Rajya Sabha MP told reporters.
“The Congress should remember that the alliance came into being not because of its own goodwill but because of the credibility that our leader enjoyed”.
“Nitish Kumar has five decades of political experience behind him, starting with student activism during the Emergency that also caused his imprisonment. He succeeded in bringing together many leaders who wanted to have an alliance minus the Congress. It was at the instance of our leader that they relented,” said the JD(U) leader.
Jha said, “Let us not forget that although our leader hosted the first meeting of opposition leaders (in 2023), things did not go in a manner that he would have appreciated. He was opposed to the very acronym INDIA, which rhymes with the name of the country. It was reported widely.”
“Moreover, it became clear soon that all this talk of the opposition party was just a ploy to grab power by leaders who were more concerned about their respective dynasties than anything else. Let the Congress also remember what their senior leader Digvijaya Singh spoke about Nitish Kumar,” said the JD(U) working president.
The allusion was to a widely reported episode at a recent meeting of the Congress Working Committee, where Singh had rued that the JD(U) president’s exit from the INDIA bloc had hit the coalition ahead of Lok Sabha elections.
Singh’s remark had reportedly drawn sharp remarks from Gandhi as well as Kharge, both of whom were of the view that the JD(U) supremo had “made up his mind” to realign with the BJP and his exit was good riddance.
(PTI News)
