Nitish refuses to sing the duet with Modi! The shape of things to come!
No to Modi
Patna: in a message that cannot be mistaken, the JD (U) leader Nitish Kumar recently indicated that the party will quit the National Democratic Alliance if the BJP chooses Modi as its Prime Ministerial candidate. This declaration marks a departure not simply in Bihar politics but possibly the national arena as well. It may be read as an augur for the forthcoming realignments and political departures to be expected in the coming months.
Soon after Nitish’s statement and a volley of exchanges between the BJP and JD [U], JD[U] chief Sharad Yadav said on Monday it was for the BJP to ensure the opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA) remains united. The scathing remarks came in the wake of a war of words between the two alliance partners – both at the national level and in Bihar – over Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s probable candidature for the PM’s post in 2014 elections.
In an interview to a leading business daily, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had called on the BJP to name its PM candidate for 2014 polls, while stressing the nominee should be ‘secular’. The BJP had reacted adversely to those remarks. The RSS also hit back at Nitish while endorsing Modi. A few days ago, Mohan Bhagwat came out in full support of Modi, as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate and took Nitish Kumar to task over his recent comments that the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections should be ‘secular and liberal’. “To keep alive the Hindutva ideology, the Hindu samaaj should come together. And the country should have a Prime Minister who believes in that ideology or propounds that view,” Bhagwat said.
“I want to make it clear that we have not given authority to anybody to give certificates of secularism to individual leaders in the BJP. All the leaders of Bharatiya Janata Party right from Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Narendra Modi are bound by the manifesto, policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party and also of the NDA,” said senior BJP leader Balbir Punj. ”I want to remind the country that Nitish Kumar was part of the NDA government in 2002 and he continued to be till 2004, then the Gujarat riots happened and now that is history,” he added.
The Congress has been through a series of humiliations from Mamta in recent times and is duly chastened. Seems, the BJP will have to go through a similar process from its NDA partners. In coalition politics, the major partner has to learn to talk humbly in the manner of a minor partner. And the minor partners continue to torture the big party till they learn the simple lesson!