Patna:
In what is being described as a clear attempt to send a message to demoralised workers that all is well within the ruling coalition in Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will be back in the worker's durbar on Monday. In Bihar, after the Nitish Kumar-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) came back into power in 2010, the last Monday of every month was reserved for NDA workers to air their grievances, give suggestions and ground feedback about the functioning of the government. However, for the first time last month, the Chief Minister decided not to play the generous host to NDA workers.
The move was speculated to be the fallout of the ongoing tension between Mr Kumar's party JD(U) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was sparked off after Mr Kumar, in an interview, had declared that the NDA should announce its leader for the 2014 elections much in advance. That interview saw extreme reactions from both the parties, culminating in NDA convenor Sharad Yadav issuing a gag order to his party leaders.
"This time, the worker's conference will be at the same venue in the Chief Minister's residence, 1 Anne Marg, and after the meeting Mr Kumar will have lunch with party workers," said Sanjay Singh, JD(U) spokesman in Patna.
The worker's conference is being organised after both the parties put a gag order on all the leaders who were making statements targeting coalition partners in the media with impunity. The JD(U) leadership felt that these statements are unnecessarily vitiating the atmosphere and affecting the day-to-day functioning of the NDA government. "There is no point taking the matter to extremes when the BJP leadership has decided to tackle the issue of NDA leadership after the Gujarat elections," a senior JD(U) leader said.
Even the BJP leaders feel that by targeting the chief minister, the party is actually harming itself. The morale of the party's grassroot-level workers was already down after the JD(U) decided to vote against Purno Sangma, the NDA's candidate for the Presidential Poll. And at a time when Mr Kumar is supposed to send a list of a dozen people for nomination in the Bihar Legislative Council, any more bickering may dissuade him to postpone the matter further, which will only be a disadvantage to the BJP.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson of the Bihar Government has claimed that Mr Kumar will be present for the swearing-in ceremony of Pranab Mukherjee as the 13th President of India. When Mr Kumar phoned the President-elect to congratulate him on his victory, Mr Mukherjee accepted Mr Kumar's request to visit Bihar soon after taking over, the spokesperson said.