It was under course correction following the crushing defeat in the lok Sabha polls, then Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had passed his baton to a party colleague coming from Mahadalit section of society, Jitan Ram Manjhi, to rule the State, but ever since Manjhi had taken the reigns, he apparently had embarrassed Kumar more than he praised lalu Prasad.
Manjhi, who earlier had also been a Minister in the previous RJD Government, came strongly in defence of RJD chief lalu Prasad on Tuesday saying it was wrong to project RJD regime as ‘jungle raj’.“Everybody has some lacunae which gets corrected with time ... everybody corrects mistake with time and its wrong to say the RJD regime was a jungle raj,” Manjhi said while addressing mediapersons.
The Bihar Chief Minister further explained the RJD regime in philosophic term saying, “what was yesterday is not today and what is today will not be there tomorrow ... time is progressive”.He also said that earlier he and lalu were part of the family but got separated due to some reason. “But now, we’re family again,” he said while making reference to the new found alliance between the RJD, JD(U) and the Congress ahead of bypolls on 10 seats in the State.
A JD(U) leader, however, said that ever since Manjhi had become the Chief Minister he never had said anything to ‘embarrass’ the RJD regime or its chief lalu but he had embarrassed either the JD(U) or Nitish on several occasions.
Earlier, Manjhi had put the JD(U) Government in an embarrassment when he said that despite Nitish’s best effort for the development of Bihar, he failed to tackle corruption in the State. He further said that he had to pay bribe to fix his inflated electricity bill sometime ago.
However, when his statement caused resentment in the party and the Government he took a U-turn next day and said he had given money to electricity department officials to buy sweets. “And, it was not in the JD(U) regime,” he said.Much earlier while referring to the worsening drought situation in the State, he had embarrassed the Government saying that officials were lying to him on several issues.Soon after taking mantle of the Government, Manjhi had categorically said that he would not be the remote-controlled Chief Minister of the State.
Recently, he put the Government in an another embarrassing moment when his son was allegedly caught with a woman police constable at a hotel in Bodh Gaya and the Opposition BJP charged ‘sexual escapade’ against his son, Manjhi reacted, “What is wrong if my son is moving with his girlfriendIJ”“Several such love-birds could be found sitting in the Eco park of Patna, but nobody says anything to them but when son of a Mahadalit CM gets caught with his girl a lot of hue and cry was made,” said Manjhi adding that it was a ‘political conspiracy’ against him to destabilise the Government.Meanwhile, many in political circle believe that in the fast changing political equation in the State Manjhi has regularly been soft towards lalu.