By Manish Anand
New Delhi, January 28: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar submitted his resignation to the state Governor Rajendra Arekar on Sunday. Kumar is now set to take oath once more as the Chief Minister of Bihar with the new ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The Congress communication department chief Jairam Ramesh has accused the Bihar chief minister of competing with chameleons for changing his political colour too often. Kumar on his part told reporters in Patna that the alliance was not working properly.
The Bihar CM told reporters that “I had not been speaking for the past few days as I was holding consultations with party leaders. It emerged that the alliance government was not working properly.” Ramesh accused the Bihar chief minister also of being an expert in betrayal.
Sources said that Kumar would share stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 4 at a rally where the chief minister is likely to give an elaborate explanation for his quitting the alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). Kumar had been dropping hints of parting ways with the RJD as almost 80 per cent of the party MPs had told him that the JD (U) should forge an alliance with the BJP for the Lok Sabha elections during the national executive meeting in the national capital.
The BJP is counting an instant gain in the Opposition poll plank of caste census getting buried in the land of its origin. It may be recalled that Kumar and the RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav had raised the demand for caste census in the country in their meeting with Modi after forming the government in Bihar.
The Congress-led Opposition block is banking on the social justice plank for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The BJP hopes that Kumar’s exit from the Opposition camp would take away the strength of the social justice plank.
After forming government in Bihar in alliance with the RJD, Kumar had ordered caste survey in the state which had also faced legal hurdle. But finally the caste survey was completed. It claimed that 63 per cent of the Bihar population consisted of the people from the backward castes. Subsequently, the Bihar government hiked the reservation in the state. Kumar led the chorus for the Centre to hold a nation wide caste census.
Taking cues from Bihar, the former Congress president Rahul Gandhi also embraced the demand for the caste census. He made the demand for the caste census a major poll issue in the recently held Assembly elections.
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