Sushil Modi takes on Nitish Kumar

Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi has stirred up a hornet’s nest by asking senior coalition partner Janata Dal United (JD-U) to refrain from dictating terms.

“In a democracy, there is no place for any right to veto or dictate terms,” said Modi, in a reference to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s reservations about his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi.

Sushil Modi was speaking at a function organised by the Extremely Backward Class (EBC) cell of the BJP. Hitting out at Kumar for the second time in the recent past, Modi said: “Nobody should treat EBCs as a vote bank, nor should anyone think of having a monopoly over them. The BJP has always been supportive of the EBCs, unlike the Congress which has never made any EBC the prime minister. But the BJP has senior EBC leaders like Narendra Modi and Shivraj Singh Chauhan, who are capable of handling the top executive post in the country.”

The EBCs in Bihar constitute 30 per cent of the electorate. They have stood by Kumar who had introduced a series of welfare measures for them.

However, Sushil Modi’s remarks assumes importance in the wake of speculations within the BJP that the deputy chief minister was too soft on Kumar and always toed his line even though the JD-U strongman showed utter contempt for Narendra Modi.
DH News Service