President of the Bihar unit of the Congress Ashok Choudhary was on Sunday playing the role of a messenger, shuttling between chiefs of alliance partners RJD and JD(U) Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar, to end the stand-off over the demand for the resignation of Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav in the wake of corruption charges against him.
Mr. Choudhary met Mr. Prasad and was later seen entering the Chief Minister’s official bungalow, 1 Anne Marg. After a while, he was again seen making a hurried entry into 10 Circular Road where the RJD chief lives with his family.
Earlier too, Mr. Choudhary had met both the leaders with a message from Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
However, Mr. Prasad had made it clear that all the talks that the Congress chief had spoken to him were “absolute rubbish.” Mr. Choudhary, though, did not speak to media.
Political sources told The Hindu that the next 48 hours were going to be crucial for the ruling alliance as Mr. Kumar would take a hard decision over the lingering issue after the presidential poll. The RJD chief had made it clear on Friday that Mr. Tejaswi Yadav would not resign “under the pressure of the BJP.”
“Now, the decision has to be taken by Nitish Kumar and he will take it in the next 48 hours, which may be fatal for the alliance government in the State”, said a senior ruling party leader, who requested anonymity.
Legislature party meetings
The JD(U) held its legislature party meeting at the Chief Minister’s residence on Sunday. “The meeting was called to discuss the presidential poll and nothing else…there was no discussion at all on other issues,” said State JD(U) chief Basistha Narayan Singh.
The RJD and Congress legislators held a joint meeting on the presidential election. So too did BJP leaders at senior leader Sushil Kumar Modi’s residence.
Mr. Modi said “an intense check and mate game is going on between the two warring allies but both are wary of losing power.” Bihar was paying the price for the rivalry between the two parties. “All work of governance has been halted... We are not in favour of mid-term poll,” he said.
