BH-JD(U) KUSHWAHA

RLSP national vice president

Bhagwan Singh Kushwaha Friday left the party and joined the

ruling JD(U) along with his supporters here and asserted that

the NDA would win 2019 Lok Sabha polls in the state.

Kushwaha joined the JD(U) at party office in the

presence of party's state unit president Bashishtha Narayan

Singh, Education Minister Krishnandan Prasad Verma and others

along with his hundreds of workers and office-bearers of RLSP.

His exit from RLSP may prove to be another jolt for

Upendra Kushwaha as his three legislators- Sudhanshu Shekhar,

Lalan Paswan and Sanjeev Shyam Singh (ML)- have already

announced that they would chart a different path than

that of the party head Upendra Kushwaha.

Out of RLSP's three MPs, Jehanabad MP Arun Kumar

is a dissident while Sitamarhi MP Ram Kumar Sharma is with the

RLSP chief. Upendra Kushwaha is the third MP of the party.

Bhagwan Singh Kushwaha, the former Bihar minister,

said that "I have left the RLSP and joining JD(U) with RLSP's

35 state level office-bearers and 1200 workers after Upendra

Kushwaha decided to leave NDA and join UPA."

"When I joined the RLSP, my condition was that it

should remain with the NDA. What Kushwaha has done (by

severing ties with NDA) was not liked by party's rank and

file. I tried my level best to ensure that Upendra Kushwaha

should remain with NDA but he (Upendra) started feeling unease

after Nitish Kumar joined the NDA," he said.

Stating that he and his supporters want to be the part

of Bihar's development story under the leadership of CM Nitish

Kumar, Kushwaha said that "2019 Lok Sabha election is a

challenge and 2020 (assembly elections in the state) is a much

bigger challenge but we will win both 2019 and 2020

elections."

Bhagwan Singh Kushwaha- who had served in many parties

earlier like CPI(ML), RJD, JD(U), Pappu Yadav's Jan Adhikar

Party- is a fellow OBC casteman of Upendra Kushwaha which

constitute a sizeable number of votes in the state.

He said that he has supported Nitish government's

social programmes like prohibition, campaign against dowry and

child marriage apart from its development saga especially the

improvement in primary and middle schools and power

availability across the state.

Earlier, state JD(U) chief and Rajya Sabha MP

Bashishtha Narayan Singh welcomed Bhagwan Singh Kushwaha and

his 1200 supporters and workers into the party fold and said

that it would strengthen the party.