Patna: Former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s son Santosh Kumar Suman resigned from the Nitish Kumar Cupboard Tuesday — a growth that would probably go away the ruling Mahagathbandhan with no outstanding Dalit face.
Suman, the minister for SC/ST welfare, mentioned Tuesday that he had submitted his resignation letter to Bihar’s Finance, Business Taxes and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary, an in depth aide of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
“I handed my letter to Choudhary as a result of Nitish Kumar mentioned throughout our final assembly that henceforth Choudhary will cope with us,” Suman informed ThePrint.
The Bihar authorities confirmed the event later within the day, saying by a notification that Suman was not a part of the ministry.
Addressing the media after his resignation, Suman mentioned he was quitting to “save his celebration”. “We have been being pressured by the JD(U) to merge our events. That is unacceptable,” the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) added.
The event may convey the curtains down on the ties between JD(U) of Nitish Kumar and Manjhi’s celebration. The connection between the 2 events, which has been rocky ever since Manjhi’s riot towards Nitish in 2015, has been particularly shaky of late, with the previous chief minister even holding conferences with the Bharatiya Janata Occasion (BJP), sparking speculations of a attainable alliance.
For the JD(U), the setback comes simply forward of an opposition assembly that Nitish is internet hosting in Patna. Seventeen opposition leaders, together with ally Congress and its chief Rahul Gandhi, will meet on 23 June on his invitation.
The event additionally comes lower than a 12 months earlier than the following 12 months’s common election.
There have been no ostensible efforts on the a part of JD(U) to persuade Suman to withdraw the resignation. On their half, leaders inside the JD(U) have downplayed the event.
“Jitan Ram Manjhi is not any huge chief and doesn’t have affect over his personal group,” JD(U) legislator Gopal Mandal informed ThePrint.
However Upendra Kushwaha, a former Nitish ally who give up the celebration in February earlier than launching the Rashtriya Lok Janata Dal, referred to as it one other try to “demoralise a Dalit chief who was additionally a former chief minister”.
Nitish, he claimed, tried to do to Manjhi the identical factor that was accomplished to him — “getting him to merge his celebration and attempting to complete him politically”. Kushwaha was referring to the time when he merged his erstwhile celebration, the Rashtriya Lok Samata Occasion, with the JD(U) in 2021.
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‘Talks over LS polls inconclusive’
Talking to the media Tuesday, Suman claimed that his father had met CM Nitish final week to carry discussions on seat sharing for the 2024 common election as an “honourable member of the (Mahagathbandhan) alliance”.
Based on The Hindu, Manjhi was vying for 5 seats — Gaya, Samastipur, Aurangabad, Jamui, and Purnia.
The assembly, nevertheless, was inconclusive, with Nitish making no guarantees, Suman mentioned.
In the meantime, JD(U) sources informed ThePrint that within the fast aftermath of Suman’s resignation, Nitish held a gathering with Choudhary and one other certainly one of his ministers, Bijendra Prasad Yadav. The sources mentioned that the chief minister has determined to switch Suman with one other Dalit chief, Sonbarsa MLA Ratnesh Sada.
One other JD(U) insider additionally informed ThePrint that Nitish was eager to jettison Manjhi out of the Grand Alliance for a while now due to the tight spot the HAM patron had put him in, significantly in regards to the state’s dry coverage.
Manjhi has been crucial of the stringent anti-liquor coverage that the Nitish authorities first instituted in 2016, even advising individuals to “get pleasure from drinks on the sly”, on one event, in accordance with media stories.
What Manjhi’s attainable exit means
The previous couple of years have seen Nitish share a rocky relationship along with his as soon as shut confidant Manjhi.
In 2014, after the JD(U) poor displaying in that 12 months’s common election, Nitish resigned from the chief minister’s workplace and selected Manjhi to switch him.
Their ties, nevertheless, steadily declined over the following 10 months, with Manjhi resigning from the place on 20 February 2015, simply earlier than a vote of confidence within the Bihar meeting.
The connection has by no means been fairly the identical since. Regardless of this, nevertheless, Manjhi’s HAM allied with the JD(U) within the 2020 meeting election and gained 4 seats — together with his personal seat, Imamganj.
In August 2022, when Nitish dumped the BJP for the third time — having accomplished so beforehand in 2013 and 2017 — Manjhi even adopted him again into the Mahagathbandhan, an alliance of the JD(U), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress.
The developments of the previous couple of months, nevertheless, have indicated that the fences haven’t utterly mended — in actual fact, Manjhi’s current conferences with BJP leaders, together with Union House Minister Amit Shah in April, have fuelled speculations that he may very well be provided the submit of governor and his son may very well be made a candidate within the subsequent 12 months’s elections.
In sheer numbers alone, Manjhi’s potential break up from the JD(U) is not going to have a lot affect on the Grand Alliance, which is at present comfortably positioned at over 150 seats in Bihar’s 243-member Vidhan Sabha.
Nevertheless it may probably go away the celebration with no Dalit face.
Dalits represent about 16 % of the state inhabitants. The most important of those are two teams — Paswans and Manjhi’s personal group, Musahar.
With the state’s most outstanding Paswan face, Chirag Paswan, already seemingly inclined in the direction of the BJP, the lack of the opposite outstanding Dalit face may probably dent the celebration.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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