Nitish Kumar’s second in command in Bihar and BJP leader Sushil Modi has extended an olive branch to Janata Dal (United) poll strategist and party vice-president Prashant Kishor.
The two have been sparring over seat sharing ahead of the assembly elections in the state due this year.
“Let bygones be bygones,” said Modi when asked about the bitterness in the wake of his attack on Kishor. The senior BJP leader, who was receiving guests at his residence on the occasion of New Year, also hoped that the people of the state will vote for the NDA in assembly polls with the same enthusiasm as was evident in the Lok Sabha polls wherein the coalition won 39 out of 40 seats.
“May the New Year bring peace and prosperity to the people of Bihar who give their blessings to NDA just like they had done in the parliamentary elections last year,” Modi said.
Political temperature in the state had soared in the last few days after Kishor in a number of interviews contended that the JD(U) must contest on more number of seats in assembly polls than the BJP.
Sushil Modi had dissed him for broaching the seat sharing pact at this stage, asserting that though the seat-sharing pact would decided by the leadership of the two parties, there were those who had “joined politics without any ideology” and were making statements about “coalition dharma”.
Kishor responded by pointing out that the people, and not any party had decided JDU’s status as the single largest party under Nitish Kumar. “It is nice to be lectured on morality by Sushil Modi, who became the Dy CM due to circumstances despite his party’s defeat in 2015 (assembly elections),” Prashant Kishor tweeted.
Prashant Kishor, who played a key role in the 2015 Bihar elections, was inducted into the JDU last year as the party’s vice president. The election management firm that he founded has since then gone to take on other clients as well and consults for Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had declined to comment on the statements being made by leaders on both sides but asserted that there weren’t any problems in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
“All is well in the NDA,” Kumar told reporters after an event to mark the death anniversary of BJP leader Navin Sinha in Bihar capital Patna.
