Patna, June 8: Union minister Upendra Kushwaha Friday sought to downplay his absence at a get-together of senior NDA leaders here Thursday night which he said was due to “personal reasons” and asserted that the coalition was “intact.”
Kuswaha excusing himself, citing his preoccupation in Delhi, from the gathering of the NDA leaders, first since Chief Minister Nitish Kumar returned to the coalition last year, had indicated discontent within the BJP-led grouping over the prickly issue of seat-sharing.
“I could not attend the function because of personal reasons. But, other leaders of my party did. Please do not try to read anything between the lines. The NDA in Bihar is intact,” Kushwaha, who heads the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLP), told reporters at the airport here on his arrival from New Delhi.
Asked whether his unexpected absence at the feast did not indicate that he had some differences with his colleagues in the NDA, Kushwaha shot back “Amit Shah too did not attend the dinner. Would you pose such a question to him?”
He also evaded queries about a statement issued by his party’s working president Nagamani Thursday that the NDA would immensely benefit if the coalition declared Kushwaha as its leader in Bihar and then fought the Lok Sabha polls next year and the state assembly elections a year later.
“This is a question you should ask Nagmani,” Kushwaha, who is on a three-day tour of Bihar, said before leaving for his Lok Sabha constituency of Karakat in Rohtas district. Nagmani, who was among the leaders of the RLSP who attended the feast, had claimed that Kushwaha represented a caste group which comprised 10 per cent of Bihar’s total population and hence his projection as the NDA’s leader would benefit the coalition in elections.
He had also claimed that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had a “disadvantage” since he belonged to the Kurmi caste, which is numerically small. Though the RLSP chief tried to show that everything was fine in the coalition, sources close to him pleading anonymity, however, said that the Minister of State for HRD has been miffed over “shabby treatment” meted out to him by NDA leaders in Bihar.