Janata Dal (United) legislators have authorised former chief minister Nitish Kumar to name a legislative party leader and deputy leader in the Vidhan Sabha, JD(U) spokesman and MLC Neeraj Kumar said on Monday.
His statement came after the JD(U) meeting at the residence of Kumar, who is also the national president of the party.
Kumar addressed the meeting of the legislative party at 1, Anney Marg, which is the official residence of the chief minister and which the JD(U) supremo, now a Rajya Sabha MP, had occupied for nearly two decades.
This was the first meeting since Kumar stepped down as CM and held significance due to the clamour within the JD(U) for important role of his son Nishant Kumar within the party and the impending cabinet expansion of the Samrat Choudhary-led NDA government.
Though there was no decision on Nishant’s future role, but Neeraj Kumar said that the former CM assured the party leaders he would himself play active role in the state.
“There is hardly any confusion about the role of Nishant, who has been accepted by everyone in the party as the leader for the future. In any case, there was no discussion on him today,” Neeraj Kumar said.
He said that the “development with justice” model of governance of Nitish Kumar is still very much in place in Bihar, as it earned Bihar the respect it had lost earlier and became a topic of national discourse.
“Nitish Kumar said that barring the Parliamentary work, which would keep him in Delhi, he would mostly stay in the state and also move around the state to take stock of the development work and gather feedback from the party cadres as well as workers of alliance parties,” he added.
The JD(U) spokesman said tha Nitish Kumar would take a call on selection of the legislative party leader soon. This is important in view of the trust vote to be sought by the Samrat government on April 24.
“The positive thing about the meeting is that Nitish Kumar assured the party workers that he was there for them and would continue to constructively contribute in Bihar’s further progress,” he added.
In the changed political circumstances in Bihar, this meeting is also being viewed as crucial in terms of deciding the future strategy of the JD(U), which is now in the supporting role in the NDA government for the first time since 2005.
With 84 members in the 243-member Bihar Legislative Assembly, the JD(U) is a formidable force and the second largest party.
Among those present at the meeting were Union minister and former JD(U) national president Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh, JD(U) working president and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Jha, and deputy chief ministers Vijay Kumar Chaudhary and Bijendra Prasad Yadav.
