'Nitish Kumar should first clear doubts about fate of his pact with RJD, says Begusarai MP Giriraj Singh

BEGUSARAI: Mocking chief minister Nitish Kumar for his bid to unite opposition parties in view of the next year Lok Sabha elections, Union minister and Begusarai MP Giriraj Singh on Friday said the former should have first cleared doubts among people about the fate of RJD-JD(U) alliance in the state and his remaining as chief minister till the state assembly elections.
"While RJD MLAs keep mounting pressure on him to vacate the chief minister's chair to make Tejashwi Prasad Yadav the chief minister after Holi , JD(U) national president Rajiv Ranjan alias Lalan Singh claims the issue of leadership is not for discussion now and the matter could only be discussed after the state assembly elections in 2025," he said.
Adding more salt to his sarcastic comments, Giriraj said there are no takers for his leadership bid across the country. "The situation reminds the awkward moments when Nitish and Telangana chief minister KCR kept waiting for each other to announce the others as the PM candidate. It was embarrassing to see Nitish doing sit-ups in front of KCR," he said.
The Union minister further said there could be no comparisons between PM Narendra Modi and Nitish as the choice for the prime minister candidature. "JD(U) got 115 seats in the 2010 assembly elections and was reduced to merely 44 odd seats in the 2015 polls.
Even after 17 years as chief minister of the state, Nitish is still searching for solutions to the people's problems through his Samadhan Yatra in the state. In contrast, under the dynamic leadership of Narendra Modi as chief minister of Gujarat and later as the Prime Minister of the country even after 27 years of BJP rule in his state, BJP won 156 seats in the last year assembly elections.
This shows the immense amount of faith people across the country have in his leadership. Even the tragic bridge collapse case of Morbi, which took place only a few months before the assembly elections there, failed to shake off people's faith in him. Narendra Modi has such credibility," he said.
In contrast, Nitish is finding it hard to win support of people even in his own state, Giriraj said. He claimed that Nitish is so rattled by persistent demand of the RJD MLAs to vacate the CM's chair that to mount a counter pressure on RJD leaders, he utilized Union home minister Amit Shah's official communication regarding the appointment of Rajendra V Arlekar as the state governor, to give an impression that the channel for talks between him and BJP was still not closed.