Scindia to discuss alliance politics in Patna
Senior Congress leaders Jyotiraditya Scindia and Jai Prakash Agarwal will meet party legislators and other functionaries in Patna on Friday to discuss the political situation in Bihar after chief minister Nitish Kumar dumped the Grand Alliance and renewed his ties with the BJP.
Scindia, the party’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha, and Agarwal, a former Delhi unit chief, will elicit views of the Bihar leaders on the impact of Kumar’s move on Congress and also discuss the future strategy, including the alliance politics.
A Bihar Congress functionary told Hindustan Times that the two leaders will hold a collective interaction with all state officebearers and also separately meet individuals at the party headquarters at Sadaqat Ashram in Patna. However, Congress general secretary in-charge of Bihar, CP Joshi, will not be present.
The visit by the central team is also seen as an attempt by the Congress high command to address the leadership issue in the state.
The current Bihar Congress president, Ashok Chaudhary, has been facing rebellion for a long time now. A large number of state leaders had repeatedly urged the central leadership to replace him in view of his holding the important education portfolio in the ‘Mahagathbandhan’ government, arguing that he was unable to devote much time to organisational matters.
But that arrangement has since changed, with Kumar forming a coalition government with the BJP.
Chaudhary, once considered close to Kumar, was instrumental in persuading the Congress high command to fight the 2015 assembly elections with the Janata Dal (United) leader as the face, a move that eventually forced Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad to agree to the formula and form the Mahagathbandhan or Grand Alliance against the BJP.
For more than two years now, the Congress leadership has been hunting for a new chief in Bihar but was unable to do so due to the state’s caste complexities.
Soon after Kumar took oath as chief minister for the sixth term on July 27, with BJP as his junior partner, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had summoned Chaudhary to Delhi and held detailed discussions with him on the overall political situation and the state of affairs in the organisation.