Ahead of the Delhi Assembly elections, senior Janata Dal(United) leader Pavan K Verma has confronted Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over the party’s alliance with the BJP in two seats-Burari and Sangam Vihar- for the February 8 election despite having expressed apprehensions ‘in private’ about the BJP-RSS leading the nation into a ‘dangerous space’. This is for the first time that the JD(U) headed by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is having a tie-up with the BJP outside Bihar.
In a strongly worded two page letter to Nitish, Varma said he is ‘deeply perplexed’ by the development amid the citizenship law protests and is looking to him for “ideological clarity”. Varma, who shared screenshots of the missive on his official twitter handle and Facebook profile, said he was ‘perplexed’ by the partys tie-up with the BJP for the Delhi Assembly polls, accusing the saffron party of having “embarked on a massive, socially divisive agenda.” “On more than one occasion, you have expressed your grave apprehensions about the BJP-RSS combine,” Pavan Varma said in the letter on Tuesday.
The BJP had announced on Monday that it will spare two seats for the JD(U) in Delhi and one for another NDA partner— the LJP headed by Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan. Both the JD(U) and the LJP had ploughed the lonely furrow in the recent assembly polls in Jharkhand, where the saffron party lost power to the JMM-Congress-RJD alliance.
“If these are your real views, I fail to understand how the JDU is now extending its alliance with the BJP beyond Bihar, when even long standing allies of the BJP, like the Akali Dal, have refused to do so,” he wrote. “This is especially so at a time when the BJP, through the CAA-NPR-NRC combine, has embarked on a massive social divisive agenda aimed at mutilating the peace, harmony and stability of the country,” Varma said.
“In my first meeting with you in Patna in August 2012, even before I had resigned from the IFS, you had spoken to me at length and with conviction on why Narendra Modi and his policies are inimical for the country,” Varma, one of the most articulate spokespersons of a political party, said.
“When you were leading the Mahagathbandhan (a grand alliance which also had the RJD and the Congress as partners), you had openly made a call for RSS-Mukt Bharat. These views, articulated for a sustained period, are a matter of public record,” Varma wrote.
In comments that may embarrass Kumar, Varma claimed that the JD(U) leader, even after aligning with the BJP again in 2017, had confessed to him ‘in private’ how the current saffron party leadership had ‘humiliated’ him. “You mentioned on more than one occasion that the BJP was leading India into a dangerous space. It was your personal view, as conveyed to me, that the BJP is destroying institutions and that there is a need for democratic and socialist forces within the country to regroup, a task for which you actually assigned a senior party official,” Varma added, without disclosing who the JD(U) leader was.
JD(U) national vice president Prashant Kishor also had come out strongly against the party’s support to the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill when it was tabled in Parliament last year.