Sharad faction removes Nitish Kumar as JD(U) prez

The Janata Dal (United) JD (U) virtually split up on Sunday, with the Sharad Yadav faction removing Nitish Kumar as the party president and appointing Gujarat MLA Chotubhai Vasava as the acting president.

The Yadav faction called for a national executive meeting in Delhi, where it levelled a series of allegations against Nitish, the chief minister, who broke the grand alliance in Bihar and joined hands with the BJP to form another government.

Vasava, whose vote is said to have turned the tables against the BJP’s plans to topple Congress’ Ahmed Patel in the Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat, was chosen as the acting president to conduct polls. Vasava had rebuffed the chief minister’s directions to vote for a BJP candidate in the polls.

A resolution passed in the meeting claimed that Nitish was “deceitfully elected” as the party chief in October 2016 and that he breached party discipline by acting against the national council’s decision in April 2016 that asked him to take steps to unite political forces to “decisively defeat” the BJP.

The war between Nitish and Yadav began as the former snapped ties with the RJD and the Congress in July and then formed a government with the BJP’s support. Yadav did not attend the national council meeting on August 19 in Patna called to clear the decision on joining the NDA, while Nitish’s supporters moved for disqualifying the former from the Rajya Sabha.

While the Yadav faction has not “expelled” Nitish from the party, it has now decided to take the disciplinary issues to a panel that will take a call on the action to be taken against the chief minister.