Backing Nitish on the floor no signal for ties: Cong

The Congress support to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar during the June 19 trust vote is no signal for the future alliance between the two parties, said All India Congress committee (AICC) general secretary CP Joshi.

It was just a “tactical move” to “keep the communal forces at bay,” he clarified on the sidelines of his first meeting with Bihar Congress functionaries in Patna on Saturday.

Joshi, who is in-charge of the party affairs in Bihar, said the Congress would try to become the voice of the people and protest against “all anti-people policies being pursued by the state government."

His remark sounded at odds with media reports suggesting that the Congress leadership was “cosying” up to Nitish Kumar, ahead of some kind of alliance with his party, the JD(U).

Soon after Kumar split up with the BJP on June 16, following the party’s “PM slotting” of Narendra Modi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had called him “secular.”