long-time associate of JVM chief Babulal Marandi and general secretary of the party Praveen Singh has called him incapable and a leader who cannot win elections on his own turfs after the latter was not invited to attend the meeting called on Saturday to review the Assembly poll debacle.
In a conversation with The Pioneer on Saturday, Singh accused Marandi of showing him disrespect and blamed party legislative body leader Pradeep Yadav for hijacking the JVM.
“I cannot accept Pradeep Yadav as my leader. He is misguiding Babulal Marandi. The party calls a meeting to review poll performance but ignores office bearers who fought the polls along with the candidates and were equally responsible! I think Babulal Marandi is not in a position to run the organisation now and has lost his control over the nerves of the party,” said Praveen, who is considered one of the party’s strategists.
He also blamed Yadav for the party not making advances as far as its terms with the BJP is concerned. Notably, talks about merger of the both the parties and participation in the recently formed Raghubar Das Government have been rife after Marandi met BJP’s national president Amit Shah secretly in Delhi.
“I still have good terms with top leaders of the BJP and could have made the party agree to an understanding. But Pradeep Yadav wanted everything like his berth in the Government, portfolio to bargain first and then merge the JVM after three months. He and some of his sycophants who always chant about Babulal Marandi have made him an egoist. Marandiji has started believing that Amit Shah and the BJP would come to their knees. He should realise that he is no longer a star in the eyes of the people and has lost his own elections on his own turf,” said the fuming leader.
Terming himself a loyal to the first Chief Minister of the State, he said that most of side effects of his Government and cost to keep it running came to his account while he earned good name. Nevertheless, the sulking leader has not resigned from the membership of the JVM but he expressed his willingness to stand a non-political organisation to “highlight issues before the State like”.