In a significant political development, the Congress on Sunday said that it may be willing to join hands with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar once again if the latter snapped ties with the BJP.
The Congress party’s Bihar in-charge and national spokesperson, Shakti Singh Gohil, told PTI Bhasha, “If any such possibility emerges, then we will definitely discuss it with our allies.” He was reacting to a question on his party’s response if Kumar wanted to return to the grand alliance. “Nitish Kumar is with the fascist BJP. We do not know what compelled him to join hands with the party, they are incompatible,” Gohil added.
The Congress, RJD and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) had formed the grand alliance, which swept the assembly polls in 2015. However, little over a year after coming to power, Kumar had sensationally dumped his old partners to form a new government in Bihar with the help of the BJP.
Gohil’s remarks come in light of contradictory statements being made by the BJP and JD(U) over seat sharing for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, giving an impression that all was not well between Kumar’s JDU and the saffron party. Not too long ago, the RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, who held the post deputy chief minister under Kumar, had said that the doors of the ‘mahagathbandhan’ had been closed for Nitish Kumar.
Yadav, whose stature has grown considerably in the absence of his father, Lalu Prasad Yadav, holds Kumar, among others, responsible for the politics of vendetta being carried out against his family.
Together with the Congress, Yadav’s RJD has inflicted two back-to-back defeats to Kumar’s party and the BJP’s candidates in the recent Lok Sabha and assembly by-elections. People close to him say that Yadav is extremely confident that he’s managed to turn the tables on Kumar by consistently highlighting the latter’s poor governance in Bihar.