Patna: Even before the last voter has exercised his franchise and Lok Sabha election results are announced, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Bihar has decided to take revenge on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who leads a minority government following the split in the BJP-JDU alliance. BJP leader and former health minister Ashwini Kumar Chaubey, a well-known Nitish Kumar baiter, has claimed the state government will collapse on May 21.
Bihar BJP claims several disgruntled JDU MLAs are planning to quit the party and bring down the Nitish Kumar regime after Lok Sabha election results are announced on May 16. The state BJP unit smarting under Nitish Kumar's sudden decision to break the 17-year-old alliance is in touch with many MLAs who feel that they have no say in the way government functions and the Chief Minister has been acting in a dictatorial manner.
Former Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi on Tuesday set the cat among the pigeons by claiming that 52 Janata Dal (United) MLAs were in contact with BJP. Even though Modi and his colleague Shahnawaz Hussain said that they were not planning to topple the regime but they added that Nitish Kumar's government would fall due to its "internal contradictions".
According to them the MLAs were against Nitish Kumar's decision to break the highly successful BJP-JDU alliance in June 2013. Modi added that several JDU MLAs were in fact working against the ruling party's Lok Sabha candidates and helping the BJP nominees as they didn't want Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal to take advantage of the split.
While JDU leader and Bihar Food and Civil Supply Minister Shyam Rajak, who is a close confidante of Nitish Kumar, challenged the BJP to prove its claims and bring a no-confidence motion in Assembly, all is clearly not well in the ruling party. JDU President Sharad Yadav at an election rally on May 2 in Muzaffarpur had criticised Nitish Kumar for playing caste politics.
Even since the JDU-BJP alliance broke, Nitish Kumar has refused to allot the vacant ministries among his MLAs fearing a rebellion. The Chief Minister has been looking after all portfolios which had been with the BJP. These include Labour Resources, Animal Husbandry & Fisheries, Mines and Geology, Urban Development & Housing, Art, Culture & Youth Affairs, Finance, Commercial Taxes and Forest, Tourism, Road Construction, Public Health & Engineering, Health and Co-operative portfolios.
Following the resignation of Parveen Amanullah and Renu Kumari Kushwaha in early 2014 the Social Welfare and Industries & Disaster Management portfolios, too, fell vacant. The Chief Minister finally made Dhamdaha MLA Leshi Singh the Industries & Disaster Management Minister in March 2014.
But even the BJP is not without dissidents as many party MLAs have openly came out in support of Nitish Kumar and have worked against the official party nominee in the Lok Sabha elections.
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