‘Do You Call It a Letter?’ Nitish Kumar Continues Tirade Against Aide Pavan Varma

Patna: In a fresh snub to disgruntled JD(U) leader Pavan Varma, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Friday said the letter from the former career diplomat-turned-politician had "no value" and "no meaning" and hence did not deserve a reply.

Kumar made the remarks here in reply to a query from journalists who had approached him with queries about Varma's stance after the JD(U) chief rebuffed the national general secretary that he would take a decision about his continuance in the party after receiving a "reply" from the chief minister.

"When a member of the party sends a proper communication, it is replied to. Do you call it a letter? An email sent and the contents shared thereafter with the media. It has no meaning and no value", Kumar said on the sidelines of a function to mark birth anniversary of Karpoori Thakura former chief minister whom he considers as his political ideologue.

Varma, who resigned from the IFS in 2013 to take up the role of Kumar's culture adviser and enjoyed a two-year tenure in the Rajya Sabha subsequently, has been critical of the party's support to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

The differences, however, seem to have become irreconcilable ever since he shared screenshots of a two-page letter written to Kumar earlier this week, questioning the party's decision to contest the Delhi assembly polls in alliance with BJP.

Varma had cited the example of another NDA ally Shiromani Akali Dal which decided to stay away from Delhi elections following the BJPs refusal to heed the demand for bringing Muslims under the ambit of CAA and wondered why the JD(U) was contesting in alliance with the saffron party, which was under attack from protesters across the country.

The former IFS officer, who is a well-known columnist and writer, had also ended up making public through the letter shared on social media details of conversations he claimed to have had with Kumar "in private".

The conversations, he claimed, included the chief ministers unease with the BJPs "divisive" agenda, which led him to part ways in 2013 and persisted after his return to the NDA in 2017.

He had also claimed that Kumar had once told him that he was "humiliated" by the BJPs "current leadership" and asked an unnamed "senior party official" to work on regrouping socialist and democratic forces against the saffron party.