Patna,(BiharTimes): The infighting within the Bihar unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party has raised a pertinent question: why is there so strong opposition to the candidature of Sushil Kumar Modi for the post of chief minister. Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh was taken aback by the storm his statement created in Bihar.

This is so in spite of the fact that SuMo had served as the deputy chief minister of the state for seven and a half years and is easily much more influential figure in the party than anyone else. He is one of the most experienced yet somewhat young leader. He has been in the politics since his Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parisad days in early 1970s and was among the leading light of the JP movememnt. He has better understanding of politics, economics and society of Bihar than many other state level leaders of the party.

Yet there is so many voices against him.

Party leaders like Giriraj Singh and Ashwini Kumar Choubey had publicly expressed their displeasure during the distribution of party tickets for the Lok Sabha seats. They virtually took vow not to let him become the chief ministerial candidate of the party.

But dissatisfaction over distribution of tickets is not a big issue now when the party performed so well in the Lok Sabha poll.

The root of the anger can be traced to SuMo’s years as the deputy chief minister-cum-finance minister of Bihar.

Many party leaders and workers started feeling that he became too arrogant and too big for his boots. It is alleged that he would not pay due respect to senior and elderly party leaders. So when the late Tarakant Jha, arguably the oldest Sangh Parivar member in the state, left the BJP in February last, he publicly held Sushil Modi responsible for it. He went on to praise Narendra Modi even though he embraced the membership of the Janata Dal (United).

Secondly, it is said that SuMo went too far in praising the then chief minister Nitish Kumar. He even went on to see prime ministerial material in Nitish. This practice continued even after the then Bihar CM publicly humiliated the BJP bigwigs on June 12, 2010 by cancelling dinner and a week later by returning Rs five crore donated by the Gujarat government for the Kosi flood.

NaMo was then not even named as the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP.

SuMo differed with Nitish only once and that too was over the issue not much related to Bihar. It was after the presentation of the Union budget by the then finance minister, P Chidambaram. While Nitish was appreciative of it, SuMo as the state finance minister then, flayed it. That was only three months before the NDA got split on June 16, 2013.

Thirdly, it is easy to criticize Modi as he does not come from politically, or even numerically, strong castes like Rajput, Bhumihar or Yadav. He also failed to cultivate any lobby based on social consideration.

No doubt BJP leaders used to shower praise on Nitish Kumar, but no one went to the extent of SuMo. After the cancellation of dinner many of them became a bit guarded. In fact Giriraj Singh, Ashwini Choubey, Chandra Mohan Rai, Dr C P Thakur etc started criticizing the then chief minister though the first three were still in his cabinet.

So most of the leaders who are today publicly opposing the name of Sushil Kumar Modi are those very lot who privately and in public used to flay him even before the BJP and Janata Dal (United) parted ways.

There is no dearth of people who are asking as to how morally appropriate it is for SuMo to criticize the Nitish government wnen he never uttered a single word against him when in power. Almost all the scams and irregularities which Sushil Modi is regularly raising now has its origin in the same Nitish era.

Observers are of the view that today the same old ‘political sin’ committed by SuMo is haunting him.

However, the SuMo camp is hopeful that like in the case of NaMo’s candidature for the post of PM the present crisis would soon be over as there is no one who can match his stature in the Bihar BJP.