Patna: JD(U) national working president Sanjay Kumar Jha on Wednesday defended party president Nitish Kumar against Congress functionary Sonia Gandhi’s reported observation at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting on Tuesday that it was good that the then Bihar CM had exited INDIA bloc.“It was Nitish who had first made moves for the formation of the INDIA bloc. He even toured the country and held personal discussions with functionaries of regional parties who later joined the INDIA bloc,” Jha told reporters on Wednesday.Jha claimed that the functionaries of those regional parties had privately expressed reservations about including the Congress in such a bloc. “Ask the functionaries of those regional parties about it today. Any claim that the BJP and its top brass control Nitish is without any basis,” Jha said.“So far as I know Nitish, no one and no party can have control on him. He is open to advice from anyone, but he takes his own decision on any matter. I am privy to it, I know it,” he added.Jha also drew a distinction between what he described as Nitish’s political approach and that of the Congress leadership. “Nitish had made a niche in the public mind for himself by his sustained work on the development front and by his commitment to social justice. In contrast, the Congress had not moved out of its partisan interests,” he said.“For them, the first priority is family interests, only then development and country. The family interests (read of the Gandhi family) are paramount, but Nitish has only pursued ‘suchita ki rajniti’ (principled politics), and nothing other than that,” Jha added.
