Union minister and senior BJP leader Giriraj Singh said that had the Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar not committed mistake in 2015 and become the Grand Alliance chief minister there would have been no Rashtriya Janata Dal today. In an interview to News18 Bihar/Jharkhand which was telecast on Thursday he said that RJD got a new lease of life after 2015.
Giriraj spoke on all the issues right from the 1996 Samata Party’s entry into the National Democratic Alliance to the present day. On the pointed question about his relationship with Nitish he said that it kept changing according to the situation. He did not sound much critical against the Lok Janshakti Party chief Chirag Paswan, but added that he is neither soft nor hard towards him.
However he conceded that had Lok Janshakti Party not put up its candidate in Raghopur where the BJP had its candidate Tejashwi Yadav would never had won the election. What type of Hanuman Chirag is? Giriraj explained in detail about his relationship with Nitish when the latter was in the National Democratic Alliance or outside.
Giriraj said that the BJP was always large-hearted towards Nitish and reminded him of 2000 Assembly election result when the saffron party after winning 67 seats offered the post of chief minister to Nitish Kumar whose party Janata Dal-United won only 37 seats. It needs to be mentioned that the undivided Bihar then had 324 MLAs and the Nitish Kumar government failed to prove majority on the floor of the house. The RJD led by Rabri Devi once again became the chief minister for the next five years.
Giriraj’s post-Assembly election interview to a television channel has once again raised speculations in the political circle that everything is not hunky-dory within the NDA. There is a faction within the BJP which doesn’t want to see the continuation of Nitish Kumar as the chief minister.
