Patna, Sept. 19 -- Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary asserted that his predecessor Nitish Kumar, the JD(U) president, had given up the post of his own accord and was not elbowed out by the BJP.

Choudhary, who is the first BJP leader to head a government in the state, also underscored that Kumar, who was now a Rajya Sabha MP, "remains the NDA's undisputed leader in Bihar".

"Nitish Kumar stepped down of his own accord. We had not asked him to do so. Of course, he did acknowledge the fact that Atal Bihari Vajpayee had let him become the chief minister for the first time when BJP had more MLAs than his party and that he now wanted to reciprocate the gesture," Choudhary said at an event organised by a leading media group here on Friday.

The allusion was to a development of 2000, when assembly polls had thrown up a hung house and Kumar, whose outfit was then known as "Samata Party", took oath as the chief minister but resigned within a week as the NDA failed to cobble up a majority.

While highlighting the "support" the BJP always extended to Kumar, Choudhary also pointed out that RJD president Lalu Prasad, the saffron party's staunch adversary, too, owed his stature in politics to the "benediction" of the NDA's largest partner.

"Lalu ji became the Chief Minister of Bihar thanks to the benediction of the BJP. Of course, those who witnessed that era would also recall that in doing so he snatched away the rightful claim of Dalit leader Ram Sundar Das," said Choudhary.

Notably, Prasad was in the Janata Dal in 1990 when it formed a government in the state with outside support of the BJP. Das, who had enjoyed a short tenure as chief minister in the 1970s, was again in the race and said to have enjoyed the support of the then Prime Minister VP Singh.

However, in the election for legislative party leader, Das lost to Prasad by a narrow margin, which has been attributed by political analysts to a division in votes of upper caste MLAs, thanks to another Janata Dal leader Rsghunath Jha having thrown his hat in the ring.

Choudhary who, incidentally, had started as a minister in the government of Rabri Devi, the wife of Prasad, who succeeded him as CM, also bristled at their son Tejashwi Yadav mocking him as a "selected, and not elected" leader.

Without mentioning by name Yadav, the RJD working president who is also leader of the opposition in the state assembly, the chief minister said, "He should remember that her mother too was not elected by the people when she first became the CM. And his party had not announced beforehand that it would back him for the Deputy CM's post".

Choudhary, whose ascent as the chief minister, within less than a decade of joining the BJP, is understood to have caused a lot of heartburn in the party, ducked a query as to whether he was confident of staying in office till the next assembly polls in 2030.

He said, "I am a small leader who owes his standing to the blessings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar, the NDA's undisputed leader in Bihar. The party has given me a lot. I was made state president, became Deputy CM twice and, for the first time, got the Home portfolio, which earlier remained with the CM. I am focused on doing my job".

Choudhary said his priorities were law and order and education, besides better revenue generation through industrialisation.

He also claimed that his government was effectively tackling the current floods, ably assisted by the Centre and that the state was also working towards long-term measures like inter-linking of rivers.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.