Kanhaiya meets Nitish aide, sets tongues wagging in NDA

Many eyebrows were raised in Biharon Monday as news broke of a meeting between CPI's rising starKanhaiya Kumar and Ashok Choudhary, a minister and key aide ofChief Minister Nitish Kumar.

A fiery former JNU student leader, Kanhaiya has beensoft toward Nitish Kumar despite their parties rarely gettingon the same page on most issues. Kanhaiya met Choudhary onSunday.

During his failed bid for the Lok Sabha in 2019, theformer student leader had avoided attacking Kumar. Kumar hadcome out in support of Kanhaiya when the JNU controversyerupted in 2016. The JD(U) was then not a part of the BJP-ledNDA. The two retained the soft spot for each other even afterNitish Kumar returned to the NDA in 2017.

Choudhary had headed the state unit of the JD(U)during the assembly elections and played an instrumental rolerecently in enlisting the support of the sole BSP MLA ZamaKhan and independent legislator Sumit Singh, both of whom wereinducted into the cabinet last week.

He had also caused jitters in the LJP, an ally turnedadversary, by inviting its sole MLA Raj Kumar Singh to hisresidence for a book launch function a few weeks back.

Choudhary's meeting with Kanhaiya, a staunchcommunist, came at a time when the charismatic youngpolitician is said to have been left mortified by a censuremotion that the CPI recently passed against him.

The party action had followed alleged manhandling of akey CPI official attached to the state headquarters here.

Earlier, there had been tensions between the aspiringleader and his party during the Lok Sabha elections when theCPI reportedly insisted that he share a part of money he hadraised through crowd-funding.

Kanhaiya had fought from his home constituencyBegusarai, where he lost to Union minister and BJP leaderGiriraj Singh by a massive margin.

Nonetheless, the contest had created a lot of buzz andbrought many celebrities from far-off places to the dusty townin support of the young leader who has been slapped with asedition case for allegedly raising anti-national slogans atJNU.

Sources close to Kanhaiya as well as Choudharyinsisted that it was a ''non-political'' meeting and that bothhave known each other for long.

It has, nonetheless, evoked reactions from thoseholding strong views on nationalism and against the so-called''tukde tukde gang''.

Subhash Singh, a state minister from the BJP quota,called the former JNUSU president a ''lunatic'' (paagal) andsaid his meeting with a senior leader of an alliance partnerwas ''not appropriate'' (theek nahin hai).

Ajay Alok, a JD(U) spokesman, reacted ''Kahaiya shallbe welcome into our party if he chooses to give up hisperverse (vikrit) ideology.

Kanhaiya is also understood to have been disappointedwith his party's decision to side with the RJD, which hadqueered the pitch for him in the Lok Sabha polls by fieldingits candidate, and acknowledge Tejashwi Yadav as undisputedleader of the five-party Grand Alliance.

Yadav, who has for all practical purposes inheritedthe legacy of his father and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, is saidto be wary of the former student leader who is of the same agebut exhibits superior oratorical skills and grasp of issues.

Some in the ruling alliance said on condition ofanonymity that the meeting could have been yet another attemptby the JD(U) to raise its stock after its unsatisfactoryperformance in the assembly elections.

A few hours after Kanhaiya's meeting with Choudhary,Chandan Kumar Singh, an LJP MP, called on Chief MinisterNitish Kumar.

JD(U) spokesman Rajiv Ranjan Prasad latched on thedevelopment to berate the LJP, saying ''Chirag Paswan has beenalleging that his constituency of Jamui has been neglected andthere has been no progress in Bihar at all. The meetingbetween his party MP and the chief minister is a rebuff to hisbrand of politics''.

The LJP sought to downplay the significance of themeeting.

''Our respected MP must have met the chief ministerwith regard to development works in his constituency. Wewonder what is there to be so excited about,'' LJP spokesmanAshraf Ansari said in a video statement.

Paswan had pulled out of the NDA ahead of the assemblypolls, vowing to decimate the JD(U) and help the BJP seizepower.

He fielded candidates against all JD(U) nominees, manyof them rebels from the saffron party, a strategy that costNitish Kumar's party dear and reduced it to the status of ajunior partner to the BJP in the state for the first time.