Nitish Kumar might head back to the BJP camp

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar along with Union MoS Ashwani Kumar Chaubey offers prayers, at Brahmeshwar Temple during in Buxar, Saturday. Pic/PTI

Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar is the initiator of the INDIA bloc and his return to the BJP-led NDA will harm his image, senior Congress leader Harish Rawat said on Saturday. He also asserted that if Kumar has any grievances, they will be addressed. "The RJD and all of us are ready to find a solution," Rawat said.

Kumar had joined hands with the RJD in August 2022 after he severed ties with the BJP. He, thereafter, embarked on a drive to bring together all parties across the country to take on the BJP and that culminated in the formation of opposition bloc INDIA. Rawat, a former chief minister of Uttarakhand, said, "His (Kumar's) grievances, if any, will be addressed within the alliance. The RJD and all of us are ready to find a solution. He does not need to make a U turn and taint his image."

"I do not want him to commit the mistake of taking the shelter of a party about which he used to say he would rather die than going back to it," Rawat said referring to the BJP." He (Kumar) was the initiator of the INDIA bloc. He holds an important position in the bloc. Grievances in a family are normal. But then solutions are also found within it," the Congress leader said.

To a question on whether the alliance was shaping along expected lines. Citing the example of West Bengal, he said the communist parties, the Congress and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) are rivals in that state but none of them have said they are going out of the alliance. On West Bengal chief minister and TMC supremo Mamata Bannerjee, he said she is the soul of the INDIA bloc.

Asked about the AAP's allegations that the BJP was trying to buy its MLAs, Rawat said horse-trading of MLAs to topple democratically elected governments has always been the BJP's agenda. "In 2016, the BJP tried to do it with my government in Uttarakhand but it failed. If the Supreme Court had not snubbed it and forced it to revoke President's Rule in Uttarakhand... then (Arvind) Kejriwal's government (in Delhi) would have been toppled and many others like the government in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka. The BJP has done the same thing in Maharashtra also," he said.

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