Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha on Friday questioned the rationale of Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar’s statement that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar would be the most credible face of an anti-BJP alliance.
Mr. Kushwaha, chief of NDA ally Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP), asked how someone ‘ruining’ Bihar, where “incidents of murder and loot are taking place everyday” could become Prime Minister.
RLSP spokesperson Manoj Lal Das also wanted to know, “how could Nitish Kumar dream of becoming the Prime Minister with just 16 seats?”
Out of a total of 40 Lok Sabha seats in the State, Mr. Nitish Kumar’s party JD(U) would get only 16 seats under the compulsions of alliance with the RJD and the Congress, he added.
Bihar Congress leader and Minister for Animal Husbandry and Fisheries, Awadhesh Kumar Singh, also said if the Congress won more seats the Prime Minister would be Rahul Gandhi.
However, Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav supported Mr. Pawar.
“Sharad Pawar is a big leader of the country and if he has said that Chief Minister Kumar would be the most credible face of anti-BJP alliance what is wrong in it?…Nitish Kumar-ji has all the qualities and experience to lead the country…to become a Prime Minister or not is in the hands of the people of the country”, said Mr. Tejaswi Yadav.
Mr. Nitish Kumar, himself, had denied that he was a claimant for the PM’s post though he was working to take all non-BJP parties on a common platform to defeat the BJP in the 2019 Parliamentary polls.
“My effort is for a Sangh-BJP mukt Bharat (RSS-BJP free country) and to defeat the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, all non-BJP parties, including the Congress and Left parties, have to come together,” Mr. Kumar had said.
