The newly formed Nitish Kumar-led NDA Government in Bihar won the trust vote in the State Assembly on Monday, amid a walkout by members of the Mahagathbandhan led by RJD leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav.
In the 243-member Bihar Vidhan Sabha, a total of 129 members voted in favour of the motion of confidence. Deputy Speaker Maheshwar Hazari presided over the session as Speaker Awadh Bihari Chaudhary, a member of the RJD, was removed through a resolution. Chaudhary had refused to step down despite his party losing power a fortnight ago.
After declaring the motion as passed through a voice vote, Hazari ordered a headcount following a request from Parliamentary Affairs Minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, which was seconded by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. To facilitate the floor test, Chaudhary was removed with 125 members voting in favour of the no-confidence motion moved against him by the ruling NDA. Only 112 members voted against the motion.
Kumar recently abandoned the Mahagathbandhan, of which the RJD was a key constituent, and returned to the NDA fold to form the government with the support of the BJP.
Earlier, participating in the debate on the motion, the JD(U) chief alleged that the RJD indulged in corrupt practices during the party’s rule in the State, and the new NDA-led government will initiate a probe into it.
Kumar also claimed that during RJD’s tenure, several communal riots took place in Bihar. “There was no law and order. The RJD indulged in corrupt practices during its rule (before 2005)... I will get these probed,” he said. Speaking in the Assembly, Tejashwi Yadav said he always considered Kumar to be a “father figure” and wondered what forced him to ditch the Mahagathbandhan and return to the BJP-led NDA. “I always considered Nitish Kumar as ‘Dashrath’ (a character from the Ramayan). I don’t know what reasons forced him to ditch the Mahagathbandhan,” he said.
The NDA, comprising the JD(U), the BJP, former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi’s HAM, and an Independent, has a combined strength of 128. However, it received a shot in the arm with three RJD MLAs — Prahlad Yadav, Chetan Anand, and Neelam Devi — walking over to the ruling side.
BJP MLAs, who were elated at the party’s return to power after a gap of nearly 17 months, erupted in chants of “Jai Shree Ram” as the trust vote was won by the Chief Minister, who spoke for nearly 30 minutes, venting spleen against erstwhile allies RJD and the Congress as well as the Opposition INDIA bloc, which he had helped form.
Pointing towards RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, who had served as his deputy until he remained with the Mahagathbandhan, Kumar fumed: “What was the State of Bihar while it was ruled by his father (Lalu Prasad)? There were no roads, people were afraid of venturing out in the dark after sunset. We set it right upon coming to power in 2005.”
The JD(U) chief, who was taunted by Tejashwi with the remark “what is the guarantee that Kumar will not do a flip-flop yet again?”, asserted that he was “with my old allies forever” and lamented that his efforts to bring together parties opposed to the BJP proved to be of no avail. “I had warned the Congress that things were not going well in the INDIA bloc. Some people were having problems with me occupying the centre stage. Even his (Yadav’s) father seemed to have joined my detractors,” alleged Kumar, who was seen as a contender for the post of a convener or the prime ministerial candidate of the Opposition coalition.
Kumar also came down heavily on Yadav for the claim that the State witnessed large-scale recruitment of teachers as a result of the RJD’s commitment to job creation.
“Your party (RJD) has been involved in financial wrongdoings whenever it has been in power. All good work was done when the education department was held by my party.”For a brief period, it was with the Congress, but you people created problems even back then,” the CM claimed.
The allusion was to Ashok Choudhary, former State Congress president, who had held the education portfolio when Kumar first shared power with the Mahagathbandhan between 2015 and 2017. Choudhary subsequently switched over to the JD(U) and was a powerful minister till recently.
The JD(U) supremo also questioned the RJD’s claim of championing the cause of Muslims and pointed out that it was only under his rule that the State did not witness any major communal conflagration, unlike in the past. Even the culprits of the 1989 riots, which took place before the ascendancy of Lalu Prasad, were brought to justice only after the NDA came to power.
A point of order was raised by Yadav when he saw the three MLAs of his party sitting on the ruling side’s bench. All three members voted along with the NDA in favour of the no-confidence motion, which was supported by 125 MLAs and opposed by 112. According to NDA sources, some MLAs of the JD(U)-BJP combine had not reached the House when the motion was taken up. However, they were present during the trust vote.
Those who opposed the no-confidence motion against the Speaker included Akhtarul Iman, the lone MLA of Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM, which is not a part of the Mahagathbandhan.
The election of the new Speaker is now likely to take place on Tuesday, as the day’s proceedings were adjourned after the trust vote, which concluded late in the afternoon, with no breaks in between.
