Nitish under attack after JD(U) loses Kurhani bypoll

PATNA:  Even as Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav sought to downplay the grand alliance candidate’s defeat in Kurhani Assembly bypoll, his party leader Anil Sahni, who had won the seat in 2020, demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Tejashwi, who was in Singapore for the kidney transplant of his father and RJD chief Lalu Prasad, said on his return, “We will review the result of Kurhani bye-election where the JD(U) candidate lost to the BJP nominee by a small margin. We had earlier lost the Gopalganj bypoll with a slender margin. Now, we have to see where the mistake was made,” he added.

On Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remark that the Kurhani bye-election result was an indication to the future politics of the state, Tejashwi said, “He has spoken on Kurhani but why was he silent about the results of the bypolls to Mokama and Gopalganj,” he said.

Meanwhile, RJD leader Sahni demanded Nitish’s resignation. He was disqualified from the Assembly after his conviction in the LTC scam. “The Extremely Backward Caste vote bank is no longer with Nitish,” Sahni said, demanding Tejashwi’s elevation to the CM’s post.

Earlier, JD(U) parliamentary board chairman Upendra Kushwaha, considered a close confidant of Nitish, advised the party to introspect. “We should understand that people will not move as per our calculations but we have to move in accordance with their wishes,” he tweeted while quoting a poem of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. 

Meanwhile, former Union minister RCP Singh took a dig at Nitish and said, “Nitish will continue to dream about becoming PM and in the process, he will lose Bihar too.”