JD(U) to hold national council meeting in Patna on August 29

PATNA: JD(U) has convened a meeting of its national council in the state capital on August 29 to ratify the nomination of Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan as its national president and some other decisions taken at the party’s national executive body meeting held in Delhi on July 31.
More than 250 delegates, including the party’s national office-bearers, MPs, MLAs, state presidents and other senior leaders from 23 states and union territories, would participate in the national council meeting, JD(U)’s national general secretary Afaque Ahmad Khan told TOI over phone on Friday. “A meeting of the party’s national office-bearers has also been convened on August 28,” Khan said.
JD(U)’s all top leaders, including Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, national president Lalan Singh, Union steel minister & former JD(U) national president RCP Singh and party’s national parliamentary board chairman Upendra Kushwaha would be present at the meeting. “It would be for the first time that Lalan and RCP would sit together at a meeting after the recent bitterness among their supporters over the issue of their photographs missing from one another’s posters put up to welcome them,” a party leader said.
The national council meeting is also significant because it is being held ahead of the assembly elections in Goa, Manipur, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand early next year.
As the JD(U) has already made up its mind to contest Manipur and Uttar Pradesh assembly polls in a bid to achieve the status of a ‘national party’, the issues related to the state polls are likely to be discussed at the national council meeting, sources said.
Lalan, while addressing a meeting at the party office here on August 6, said JD(U) has the status of the ‘state party’ in Bihar and Arunachal Pradesh, it needs to achieve the ‘state party’ status in two more states to become a ‘national party’. He also called for contesting the forthcoming assembly polls in UP and Manipur.
Moreover, Lalan held a meeting with senior party leaders in Delhi on August 13 to discuss issues related to the north-east states, especially assembly polls in Manipur. At the meeting, it was also decided that Jhanjharpur MP Ramprit Mandal would visit Manipur in the first week of September to take stock of the political situation there.
The meeting on north-east states was also attended by Khan, Mandal and party’s national treasurer and Gopalganj MP Alok Kumar Suman.