Patna, (Bihar Times): The hide-and-seek game is at its
peak in the dissident-plagued National Democratic
Alliance.
The best exhibition of this was witnessed in the Jet
Airways’ Wednesday night Patna-Delhi flight. Though
both the chief minister, Nitish Kumar, and sacked
building construction minister, Monazir Hasan, were in
the same plane the latter could not see the former. “I
came to know in Delhi that the chief minister was also
in the same flight. I could not see him as he might
have come late and sat in the executive class,”
Monazir tried to duck the pointed question from a news
channel. There was no version from Nitish on this
issue.
Both were in Delhi to meet the Janata Dal (United)
national president, Sharad Yadav. But upon knowing
that Nitish is also in Delhi Monazir reportedly
changed his plan and on Thursday morning left for
Ajmer. In the evening he was in Rajasthan capital,
Jaipur. Perhaps he is trying to avoid face to face
meeting with Nitish, who held two or three rounds of
talks with Sharad Yadav. He denied that he was
summoned to Delhi by Sharad.
Nitish’s sudden departure to Delhi is no less
significant. The open defiance by two dozen party
MLAs, who met at Monazir’s residence on Wednesday came
as a bolt from the blue. Nitish finally understood
that the crisis is much more serious in the Janata Dal
(United) than he was expecting. Sources said that
Sharad Yadav was trying to broker a peace between the
two. But Monazir avoided this face to face.
The scene had already shifted to Delhi and elsewhere
for the BJP. The deputy chief minister, Sushil Kumar
Modi, is finding it more comfortable to be outside the
state capital where political temperature is too hot
to be tolerated.
On Wednesday Sushil Kumar Modi ended up in Narendra
Modi’s land––may be to learn a lesson or two on
handling dissidence. Along with the new cooperative
minister, Giriraj Singh and animal and fish resources
minister, Ram Narayan Mandal, he was in the dairy town
of Anand. He held high-level meeting with the
officials and visited several places there.
Whatever may be Modi’s view about his trip to the
Denmark of India the truth is that dissidents are
interpreting it as another move of the deputy chief
minister to remain outside Patna, where he is feeling
politically very much insecure.
