A day after senior Janata Dal (United) leader Shivanand Tiwari asked his party to reconsider ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party, a Bihar Minister on Tuesday dared him to take the call instead of talking through the media.
“Instead of talking through the media, Tiwari should have spoken to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar directly and advised him to sever JD(U)’s ties with the BJP,” Cooperative Department Minister Giriraj Singh said here.
Mr. Singh said the JD(U) and the BJP had formed alliance at the national level as well as in Bihar through agreement between the leadership of the two parties and it was for them to review it, if at all.
The BJP leader claimed that his party was not part of the coalition merely for power, but it wanted to protect the interests of the over 9 crore people of Bihar.
“I will request the leadership to reconsider the alliance with the BJP and contest the elections on our own in the wake of the statements emanating from that party about the Gujarat Chief Minister,” Mr. Tiwari, a close confidant of Mr. Kumar and the national spokesperson of the party had said on Monday.
