29/03/2015

Nitish’s Tihar trip baffles his buffs in Bihar


Patna,(BiharTimes): Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Friday trip to Tihar Jail in Delhi to meet former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala has surprised many of his admirers, especially in his home state.


Till a few years back he had an image of being a crusader against corruption. No doubt, his name figured in the fodder scam case, yet thanks to his former friends in saffron outfit and media, he was always projected as a man of good reputation. He apparently joined hands with the BJP to fight ‘dictatorial’ and ‘corrupt’ Lalu Prasad, who was finally convicted in an important fodder scam case in Sep-Oct 2013.


Nitish thus acquired the name of being a politician having a relatively clean image, who would brook no nonsense. This was so in spite of the fact that till the summer of 1994 he was a very good friend of Lalu and many of those politicians whose names later came up in the fodder scam.


However, he shocked everyone when within weeks of the last year Lok Sabha debacle he joined hands with the same ‘Bade Bhai’, whom he, with the help of the BJP, tried to destroy.Many JD(U) apologists were, however, quick to defend Nitish’s political compulsion.


But what prompted him to go all the way from Bihar to Tihar to meet INLD leader, Om Prakash Chautala, also a convicted politician in a corruption case. Nitish took a cup of tea and a few biscuits with the Jat leader when the fact is that the latter, unlike Lalu, can not fetch a single vote for the Janata Dal (United) in Bihar.


Why is Nitish so eager for merger and making such great compromises. No doubt, Chautala’s party, like JD(U), was an important constituent of the NDA, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister.But today he is a convicted leader and his support base in Haryana has perhaps shrank more than of Lalu in Bihar.


Today Nitish is one politician in the Janata Parivar, who is most eager for a mega-merger. Even Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad, Shard Yadav are not so keen.It appears that he is ready to make a few more compromises.But many of his supporters are baffled by repeated change of gear by the Bihar CM. A merger with RJD may be––one way or the other––justified by JD(U) bigwigs, but why he is going to rope in discredited leaders of other states, and that too at the cost of his reputation.


Till a few months back no one would have ever imagined that one day Nitish would march to jail not to meet a scam accused, but a convicted politician. Not only that he expressed his displeasure over the fact that, an old man like Chautala, is being forced to spend time in the jail. What he failed to say is that another old and ailing man, Dr Jaganath Mishra, is in Birsa Mundal Jail, Ranchi, in a fodder scam case.Why not shed a tear or two for him, when he was, till recently, an admirer of the present CM. It is other thing that his son, Nitish Mishra, a former minister, is now with Jitan Ram Manjhi.


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