JOIN USAmid the growing uneasiness between the Janata Dal-U (JD-U) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) , the scheduled meeting of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) leaders here on Monday has been called off.
NDA meeting takes place on last Monday of every month, where workers and leaders from both parties air their grievances in the presence of the chief minister and other ministers.
But Monday’s meeting was cancelled despite Chief Minister Nitish Kumar being in town. This was apparently done to “soothe the frayed tempers.”
However, the Chief Minister’s Secretariat explained that since Nitish was supposed to meet the deputy chairperson of the Planning Commission in New Delhi on Tuesday, he was busy interacting with various heads of the department in the state capital.
“Since Bihar is mulling over the proposal to increase its Plan size from Rs 24,000 crore to Rs 28,000 crore, a lot of leg work had to be done before the chief minister leaves for Delhi for a scheduled Planning Commission meeting on Tuesday,” a source close to Nitish Kumar told Deccan Herald on Monday.
But party leaders from both camps insisted that the chasm between the JD (U) and the BJP had widened so much that time was needed to cool down the tempers.
“The diametrically opposite stand of both the parties over their support to the presidential nominees, followed by brouhaha over the next prime minister has done enough damage to the ruling coalition. We need some breathing space before facing each other,” said a senior BJP minister.
On his part, Nitish convened a meeting of his party spokespersons and counselled them not to launch a fresh offensive against the BJP.
JD(U) spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Shivanand Tiwary had blasted senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad and said even if he (Ravi Shankar) was made the finance minister, the economic condition of the country would not have improved much.
Tiwary had made the observation while defending the party’s support to Mukherjee in the race for Raisina Hill.