Though apparently his political stature has improved much after his party performed much better than Janata Dal (United) in the 2010 Assembly election yet one way or the other he is becoming a favourite whipping boy of the National Democratic Alliance.

There is no dearth of political observers who hold him responsible for most of the trouble, there is no dearth of leaders within the BJP and Janata Dal (United) who are ever-eager to put all the blames on him for whatever wrong happens in the state. A few years back there was open revolt against him within the party and many of these leaders want him to be cut to size.

On the other hand Janata Dal (United) leaders want to save the image of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, so Sushil Modi is bound to become a scapegoat. In the initial days of the politics Modi was, no doubt, well ahead of Nitish. In 1974 JP movement days he was a much prominent and acceptable face than the present chief minister of the state and other tall leaders of Bihar like Lalu and Ram Vilas Paswan. Besides, he had worked for his party outside the state too. He was among those rarest of the rare leaders in Sangh Parivar to cross the religious boundary to get married .Being a tech savvy politician of the state, he developed a widenetwork and cosy relationship with media. He too very successfully carved his own niche as one of the longest serving finance ministers of the state.

Yet Modi and controversy go together. While Nitish knows to get out of trouble Modi perhaps lacks the quality. Or perhaps pays the price of loyalty to the party cadres. So when Nitish Kumar went to Purnea last year during one of his Yatras he asked the officials to tell (now slain) MLA, Raj Kishore Kesri, to leave the dais as he does not want to share platform with him after the lodging of a rape case by a woman against him.

Modi, in contrast, chose to defend Kesri in his speech. He did the same after his murder on January 4 and termed Rupam Pathak, who stabbed him to death, as a blackmailer. While leaders within the BJP pressed for denial of ticket to Kesri in the last year election the Deputy Chief Minister backed him.

Thus Nitish cleared himself away from Kesri controversy. Similarly, when Dinkar’s daughter-in-law approached him with a complaint against Modi’s relatives the Chief Minister did virtually nothing forcing her to stage a dharna outside Rajghat in Delhi.

So as the Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar himself is no less responsible for the alleged police inaction be it in Purnea, Patna or Forbesganj. But all the blames were put on Modi.

In the Forbesganj incident too his proximity to the BJP MLC Ashok Agrawal, whose son is a joint partner of the Glucose factory which became a bone of contention, landed Modi in trouble. There are people in Forbesganj who allege that the police became pro-active a few days after Modi attended a marriage at the house of a local leader. However, Modi denies these allegations as baseless.

As the ‘secularists’ within the Janata Dal (United) finds Modi very easy to sacrifice they are no less responsible than the opposition parties in running him down.

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