PATNA--Two days before the trust vote in Bihar, Nitish Kumar, former chief minister, recounts the events of the day that became, for him, the turning point in a saga that began nine months ago with his decision to instal Jitan Ram Manjhi in his place and which is now rolling towards a dramatic Mentor vs Protégé climax.
On February 7, he says, the JD(U) president called a legislature party meeting. On the agenda was a discussion on the performance of the Manjhi government, his controversial statements, and a snowballing sense of crisis within the ruling party because of perceptions that Manjhi was turning on Nitish.
“I met Manjhi ji that morning and asked him to attend the meeting in the evening. He expressed unease, said the rumour in the political marketplace was that he would be asked to step down. I assured him he would not be replaced and asked him to take an hour, think it over.” Manjhi took that hour, says Nitish, to call a cabinet meeting that recommended dissolution of the House.
“That was the moment of decision for me,” says Nitish. “I had won the mandate but I had given him my government. But he also wanted the party. He wanted it to do as he says. It’s not wrong to trust; Manjhi’s is an unprecedented betrayal.”
Having installed Manjhi after he read a personal snub in the JD(U) setback in the Lok Sabha polls — “I felt hurt and thought my 2010 mandate had been weakened” — which, he now admits, was a “samajh ki chook”, Nitish claims he kept a distance from the Manjhi government. “I could sense things were going wrong, I was getting feedback that the administration was deteriorating, law and order worsening, transfers and postings becoming controversial. Yet I would tell those who came to me with complaints that my focus was on 2015 (assembly polls) and on the merger (of the Janata Parivar).” Then, “people started warning me that ‘kuchch bachega tab na’.” He began to realise, he says, that since the mandate was his, the blame for government failures would also be seen to be his.
The Indian Express
