Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was on Sunday elected as JD(U)
president, a move that would put him in complete command of the party as
its seeks to expand beyond the state and prepares for the 2019 Lok
Sabha polls.
His unanimous election to the top post at the party’s National Executive
meeting brought an end to the decade-old tenure of Mr. Sharad Yadav,
who had ruled himself out for a fourth term.
It is for the first time that Mr. Kumar, JD(U)’s face in Bihar, has been elected president of the state-centric party.
Its two previous presidents — George Fernandes and Sharad Yadav — were
from outside Bihar, the state they virtually made their political home.
Mr. Kumar’s name was proposed by Mr. Yadav and seconded by the party’s
secretary general K.C. Tyagi, general secretary Javed Raza, among
others, party leaders said following the meeting.
The Bihar Chief Minister, who made a spectacular return to power last
year after his party was bruised and battered in the 2014 Lok Sabha
polls, told the executive about efforts being made to bring parties with
similar ideologies together as he accepted the new responsibility,
Tyagi said.
Having spearheaded the JD(U)-RJD-Congress alliance to a massive win over
BJP-led NDA in the last year’s state assembly polls, his party is in
talks with Ajit Singh-led RLD and former Jharkhand Chief Minister
Babulal Marandi’s Jharkhand Vikas Morcha for a merger.
A similar merger move to bring together six Janata Parivar outfits
including the Samajwadi Party had come to nought last year ahead of the
Bihar polls after SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav walked out of the talks
and his party contested the state assembly elections on its own.
The JD(U) sees the next year’s Uttar Pradesh assembly polls as a major
battle before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Tyagi said, as he underlined
the importance of the merger attempts to take on BJP.
“We stopped them (BJP) in Bihar and we are working to stop them in UP,”
he said, noting that sweeping the Lok Sabha polls in these two states
was the key to the emphatic win of the saffron alliance.
Asked if JD(U) would make another attempt at merger with Samajwadi
Party, he noted that Mulayam Singh Yadav as well as BSP supremo Mayawati
had made it clear they will go it alone in the elections.
Party sources said the presence of Mr. Kumar, the preeminent party
leader, at the helm, will help JD(U) make swift moves with regard to
alliances and also help position himself as a rallying point for
opposition parties against Mr. Modi in the Lok Sabha polls.
“Humbled by party’s trust in me. Will try my best to carry Sharad
Yadav’s legacy forward and I accept the new role as president of JD(U),”
Mr. Kumar tweeted after his election.
The National Council of the party will meet in Patna on April 23 to ratify Mr. Kumar’s election to the top post.
Mr. Kumar praised Mr. Yadav’s contribution to building the JD(U) and
said he will continue to be a “margdarshak” (mentor) to the party.
With speculations over the Rajya Sabha MP’s future role, Yadav said he
would continue to broaden the base of the party which had “no longer
remained big”.
“I will remain what I was earlier... I am in national politics not due
to the party,” he told reporters earlier in the day at his residence
where JD(U)’s office bearers had met.
A resolution passed at the Executive hailed Mr. Yadav, saying he
maintained an honourable distance from nepotism, self-glorification and
factionalism.
Mr. Yadav, one of the founder leaders of the party along with Nitish
Kumar, had been at the helm since 2006 and was reelected for a third
term in 2013 after the JD(U) constitution was amended to allow him a
third term in office.
Tyagi said an atmosphere of despondency, similar to the one before the
Lok Sabha polls, now prevailed in the country with BJP’s pursuit of
“contentious” issues. He called BJP’s alliance with PDP to form
government in Jammu and Kashmir “opportunism of the highest order”.
BJP under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah is not the party of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, he said.
Hitting out at the RSS over its nationalism pitch, Mr. Tyagi said the
Hindutva outfit’s head in 1947 had disapproved of the tricolour, saying
three (the number of colours in the flag) was an inauspicious number.
No comments:
Post a Comment