Nitish scotches rumours of return to NDA fold

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday ruled out returning to the NDA, an alliance he parted with a year ago, to which the BJP retorted he would not be welcome even if he begged for another chance.

Kumar snapped at reporters asking him about speculations on the possibility of the JD(U)’s return to the NDA, saying, “Kya faltu baat karte hain (What rubbish are you talking).”

To this, BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, Kumar’s former deputy, called the JD(U) supremo a “political liability who had lost his steam” and said “naak ragdenge to bhi nahin wapas lenge” (will not be re-inducted even if begs).

Ironically, Kumar was speaking out against the BJP at RSS ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya’s birth anniversary. Upadhyaya was a member of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the original party from which BJP was born and RSS is considered as the ideological progenitor of a number of organisations including the saffron party.

The drama unfolded at a park in the city’s Rajendra Nagar locality where Kumar came to take part in the function which his government had been holding since the time it shared power with the BJP.

Kumar was accompanied, among others, by his current deputy Tejashwi Yadav, whose party RJD takes pride in having remained uncompromising in its opposition to the BJP.

Yadav, who offered floral tributes before a statue of Upadhyay, one of the founding members of the BJP’s former avatar Bharatiya Jana Sangh, insisted that his ideological stance notwithstanding, he was not averse to such niceties.

Many political analysts believe that several opposition leaders and parties maintain links with the RSS despite taking on the BJP, as part of a calculated political stance.

With inputs from News18