Nitish Kumar should join NDA: Ram Vilas Paswan

NEW DELHI: A day after Nitish Kumar decided to support NDA's presidential nominee Ram Nath Kovind, Union minister and Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan said the Bihar chief minister seems “uncomfortable“ sharing power with Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal and invited him to join the BJP-led coalition.

Talking to TOI, Paswan said, “We welcome Nitish Kumar's decision. His language indicates that he is inclined towards NDA. The CM is uncomfortable wherever he is now.Even people in Bihar are angry that he is with a party which is steeped in corruption. He is feeling very uncomfortable. He should not be on two boats at the same time and come to the NDA-fold.“

While Paswan and Nitish are hardly allies, the former's remarks ties in with the growing speculation that Bihar CM's decision, apart from his regard for Kovind, may have been influenced by his suspicions about Lalu's intent.

Congress sources spoke along same lines amid scepticism that Nitish, who depends on support from Congress and RJD, could not have risked the survival of the coalition merely because of his respect for Kovind for being a stickler of constitutional propriety . They said that JD(U) sources confided in Congress leaders deployed to persuade Nitish, about the Bihar CM's growing fears of “bad intent“ on the part of RJD chief.

Nitish and Lalu, who started together as youth leaders and shared good relationship while in Lok Dal, fell out when the RJD boss, after becoming CM with the support of the former, used formidable numbers of fellow Yadavs and the support he enjoyed among Muslims to establish family hegemony over Bihar.

Nitish aligned with BJP and after a decadelong toil ended `Lalu Raj'. However, his rift with BJP over Narendra Modi's projection as PM and the rout in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, forced him to seek rapprochement with Lalu. Though the revived partnership helped them defeat BJP in the 2015 assembly polls, misgivings and tensions always bubbling beneath the surface, seem to have hit the surface again.

Paswan said since independence there has been only one Dalit President. “It never happened during the Congress rule. In 1997, we got K R Narayanan as President when I K Gujral was the Prime Minister. Now under Narendra Modi, Kovind will be the second Dalit President,“ he said.

The LJP chief also said Kovind's election is just a formality since the numbers are stacked in favour of NDA. “I had appealed to all political parties to support Kovind's candidature to show our unanimity and concern for uplift of the poor and Dalits in the country ,“ he said.

Paswan also said the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar will collapse and the present government won't complete its term. “It was never a gathbandhan...it was always an opportunistic alliance to come to power,“ the minister said.