Kushwaha walks out of NDA as Oppn huddles on eve of results
NEW DELHI: Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) president Upendra Kushwaha resigned from the Union council of minister and walked out of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Monday even as top leaders of over a dozen Opposition parties met as part of attempts to forge an united front to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Kushwaha, an OBC leader from Bihar, said all his options, including teaming up with the grand alliance of Opposition parties, were open.
A junior minister for human resource development, Kushwaha was upset over a series of event over the last one year, but a proposal to cut his share of seat within the NDA to accommodate Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar appeared to be the immediate trigger behind his revolt. Kushwaha and Kumar are friends-turned-foe.
Kushwaha announced his divorce from the NDA at a press conference in Delhi prefacing it with a list of difficulties and betrayals that he claimed he has had to endure as a member of the alliance in Bihar. “They will not open their account,” he said, referring to the BJP and Nitish Kumar, who he alleged, were out to finish his party.
The meeting of Opposition parties, which the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) skipped, was preceded by parleys among the leaders, with Andhra Pradesh chief minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) Chandrababu Naidu meeting West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee and DMK chief MK Stalin holding talks with Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.
The meeting was held a day a day ahead of the results of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram Assembly polls and the winter session of Parliament on Tuesday. Former prime ministers Manmohan Singh and HD Deve Gowda, also a Janata Dal (Secular) leader, Congress president Rahul Gandhi, United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, National Conference supremo Farooq Abdullah, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, CPI leaders Sudhakar Reddy and D Raja, Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD) leader Sharad
Yadav and Jharkhand Vikas Morcha’s (JVM) Babulal Marandi also attended the meeting held in Parliament annexe.
In a strongly worded two-page resignation letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kushwaha said he was “dejected and betrayed” by his leadership. “There has been a fundamental conflict in what you have promised to the people before elections and what you have actually delivered,” Kushwaha wrote in his let- ter. “The fact of the matter is that under your leadership grave and unprecedented injustice have been committed upon Bihar, I say this with sense of deep regret and sorrow.”
He accused the PM of ignoring the cause of social justice to implement the agenda of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) ideological mentor, not fulfilling the commitment of special status to Bihar, and conspiring to shelve the publication of the caste census report, among others. Kushwaha said he was disappointed and dismayed with Modi’s “opaque” style of functioning and “non democratic” leadership. “You have systematically dismantled the functioning of the Cabinet…,” Kushwaha wrote to Modi. “The Union Cabinet has been reduced to a mere rubber stamp, simply endorsing your decision without any deliberation.”
Kushwaha was NDA ally in the previous parliamentary election, which Nitish Kumar contested separately after walking out of the BJP-led alliance over Modi’s election as the campaign committee chief of his party.
Kumar, who had an alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in the 2015 assembly election, returned to the NDA last year, creating discomfort to Kushwaha. Both claim to have sway over OBC voters in Bihar.
Kushwaha contested three Lok Sabha seats and was offered to take a cut this time, to accommodate Kumar. The BJP, which contested 30 seats, and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) of Ram Vilas Paswan, which contested seven, too, decided to spare some seats from their kitty to accommodate the Janata Dal (United).
“Contesting fewer seats would have meant that our voice would not have been heard inside Parliament,” he said. Kushwaha said his party has three options – to contest the next LS polls on its own, to join the grand alliance that the RJD and the Congress are trying to cobble up in Bihar, or to float a new third front. “We will take a call after a consultation within our party. There is still time left for the parliamentary election. But, we will take a decision soon,” he told reporters at a press conference at his residence.
Kushwaha had attempted to reach out to BJP president Amit Shah and PM Narendra Modi and sought appointments with them, but found them less than willing to engage him in negotiations. BJP leaders, sources said, had taken note of reports that he had been in touch with rivals and had already sensed that he had made up his mind.