press trust of india
Patna/New Delhi, July 31: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar Monday said he had no option but to walk out of the grand alliance as continuing in the coalition would have meant compromising with corruption.
Kumar, who recently jettisoned Lalu Prasad’s RJD and went back to the NDA fold after a 4-year hiatus, forming a coalition government with BJP and Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP, also praised Narendra Modi, saying “nobody has the strength to take on the prime minister.”
“There were corruption charges and cases were filed by the CBI (against Lalu Prasad and family). I had only told them to come out with proper answers. Instead, they made fun of me saying whether I was a CBI official or the police,” he told a press conference.
“Laluji did not give any clarification on corruption charges. How could I remain silent after having talked about zero tolerance to corruption? Now I have a feeling that they did not have a proper answer,” Kumar said. Kumar also defended himself against criticism over breaking a secularist alliance. “What does secularism mean? Does secularism mean making property worth thousands of crore of rupees?” he asked.
Meanwhile, the Patna High Court Monday dismissed two PILs challenging the formation of a new government by Nitish Kumar, saying the court’s intervention was no longer required after the floor test in the state Assembly. While one public interest litigation was filed by RJD MLAs Saroj Yadav and Chandan Verma, the other was by Jitendra Kumar, a Samajwadi Party member.
Kumar had comfortably won the confidence vote 131-108 Friday. Even as Kumar defended his decision of aligning with the BJP, JD(U) veteran Sharad Yadav voiced his disapproval, saying the mandate in the 2015 Assembly polls was for the grand alliance. He termed the development “unpleasant” and “unfortunate”.
“The situation is very unpleasant to us… It is unfortunate that the coalition has been broken. People’s mandate was not for it. Bihar’s 11 crore people had endorsed our alliance,” Yadav told reporters outside Parliament. The Rajya Sabha member has met a number of opposition leaders since Nitish Kumar walked out of the 3-party Grand Alliance, which also included the Congress, and joined the NDA camp. Kumar, on the other hand, played down Yadav’s views, saying people have different opinions in a democracy and the party leaders would get to air them at the JD(U)’s national executive meeting in Patna August 19.
