Nitish Kumar’s ‘crutch-politics’ coming to end: Bihar BJP chief

Bihar Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Samrat Choudhary on Wednesday hit out at chief minister Nitish Kumar on the completion of one year of the Grand Alliance (GA) in the state saying that the CM has completed “one more year on crutches to keep his chair safe but his countdown has begun”.

“His time is up and the people of Bihar will give him a send-off that will be an example for those who pay with mandate for personal interest. He is passing through a phase of helplessness and indecisiveness just to carry on,” the Bihar BJP leader said.

In a Facebook post, Choudhary said that a year ago, Nitish Kumar had decided to sit in the lap of the Lalu family, negating the mandate of the people.

“In his new company, he has been completely draped in the colour of the RJD (Rashtriya Janata Dal). From a symbol of good governance in the company of the BJP, he has allowed himself to become the epitome of bad governance, opportunism and the master of U-turns.”

Narrating the GA’s one-year journey, Choudhary wrote that it was nothing but a saga of how one man’s ambition had played with the life and future of 120 million people of Bihar.

Kumar had in August 2022, split with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) for the second time in eight years

Referring to the Bihar government’s alleged atrocities on the protesting teachers over the recruitment row, Choudhary said, “Bihar has seen how a power-drunk man, in quest of his personal interest, stabs in the back of the people, who took him to heights and joins hands with his detractors. The rising crime graph is just one manifestation of the misrule, while lathi charge and firing on those reminding him of his promise to provide 10-lakh jobs with another.”

Maintaining that there were innumerable examples of arrogance and slide in governance, the state BJP chief underlined that the way farmers and their family members were beaten in Chausa or lathi charge and firing on BJP workers in Patna, in which a BJP leader was killed, were reflections of the growing insensitivity of Nitish Kumar.

A BJP leader from Jehanabad district was allegedly killed in a police crackdown in Patna to disperse aspirants and Opposition party workers protesting against the domicile policy of teachers’ recruitment in the state.

He further slammed Kumar over the change in prison policy by the Bihar government in April allowing the premature release of convicts serving lifetime who have served 14 or 20 years in jail.

The rules were amended on April 10 and Anand Mohan, the gangster-turned-politician, who spent less than 16 years behind bars, walked out of jail on April 27.

“The Jehadi forces are getting emboldened, while the anti-socials have got a field day to carry out loot and murder at will. The government changed the law to facilitate the release of two dozen gangsters. Bihar police records say there is at least one murder reported in Patna every day. Hindus are being targeted and insulted. Political murders are again becoming common. But the conscience of Nitish Kumar is no more shaking him, as he shamelessly tries to defend the indefensible with chop logic,” he wrote.