Congress president Sonia Gandhi and party vice president Rahul Gandhi are learnt to have given up their efforts to mediate between Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad Yadav in the ongoing crisis affecting the coalition government in the state. Besides RJD and Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United), Congress is the third constituent in the alliance.
Sources in the Congress said that when Nitish met Rahul in Delhi, he had urged the Congress leader to persuade Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav to resign pending further developments in the corruption case against the Yadavs. The chief minister impressed upon Rahul that the state government cannot afford to be seen as shielding the corrupt, more so when they are taking on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP in 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Rahul had assured Nitish that he would try his best to work out an amicable exit for Tejaswi from the government.
Tejaswi, who had met the chief minister and offered an explanation, later met Congress president Sonia Gandhi. It is not clear whether she suggested that he step down in lieu of “some other adjustments”, but whatever she said was clearly not acceptable to Lalu, who is slated to meet the 80 legislators of his party. RJD sources in Delhi said the meeting was “routine, held before the Vidhan Sabha session that begins on Friday”.
Nitish, who was in the national capital to attend the swearing in of President Ram Nath Kovind, told media, “The alliance between the RJD and the JD(U) is there for everyone to see”. As usual, neither his words nor his body language gave away what the chief minister may do when the house meets in Patna on Friday.
Nitish has been wanting Tejaswi out of his government ever since the CBI named the latter and his parents and siblings in a land scam pertaining to the era when Lalu was the Union railways minister. It has been alleged that Lalu awarded railway contracts in lieu of prime land transferred to a shell company that later transferred it to the Yadav family including Tejaswi. A hoarding outside that plot says Bihar's biggest mall is being built there.
Meanwhile, Lalu has not changed his stance that the opposition unity will not be affected by the ongoing showdown between the two Bihar satraps.
