A day after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was re-elected as the national president of the Janata Dal-United (JD-U), former party president Lalan Singh on December 30 vowed to sue media outfits that had carried reports of an alleged rebellion he had plotted against Mr. Kumar and in favour of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav.
Mr. Singh had offered to resign on Friday, after which Mr. Kumar’s name was proposed for the top party post. At the party’s national executive committee meeting in New Delhi’s Constitution Club, Mr. Kumar was re-elected to the post for the second time.
In a series of posts on social media platform X, Mr. Singh said that he would soon send a legal notice to all such media outfits. He said that many misleading facts had been continuously published by a section of media for the past week. He stressed that attempts had been made to question his 37-year-old relationship with Mr. Kumar.
Mr. Singh further said that a leading newspaper and some TV channels had reported prominently that he had been removed from his post as party president in an attempt to make Mr. Yadav the CM. “The news has also been published that on December 20, a meeting of a dozen MLAs was held in the office of a Minister in which I was also present and the process of breaking up JD(U) was discussed,” he also posted.
“This news is completely misleading, false and tarnishing my image. I was in Delhi with the Chief Minister on 20th December and in the evening of 20th December; I was involved in a meeting with all the MPs at the Chief Minister’s Delhi residence. The newspaper has deliberately published such news to tarnish my image,” Mr. Singh alleged.
“The fact is that due to being busy in my parliamentary constituency, I left the post of president on my wish and with the consent of the Chief Minister. Those who have written and published such misleading news will be in trouble. JD(U) is united under the leadership of Nitish Kumar ji. I have decided that after returning to Patna, I will immediately give a legal notice to the concerned newspaper and file a defamation case against them for tarnishing my image,” Mr. Singh wrote.
Earlier, senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi had claimed that two factions had formed within the JD(U), one of which was supporting RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, and Mr. Singh was leading it with over 12 MLAs. Mr. Modi had also said that in a recent meeting of the INDIA (Indian National Developmental, Inclusive Alliance) bloc held in Delhi, when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had proposed the name of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge as the grouping’s prime ministerial face, Mr. Singh had remained silent. Mr. Modi had further said that Mr. Singh had not returned to Patna with Mr. Kumar, and had instead returned to the State capital on the day Mr. Lalu Prasad and Mr. Tejashwi Yadav had returned to it. On Sunday, Mr. Modi added that he had already predicted Mr. Singh would resign.
“A lot of things are yet to happen and just need to wait for some time. Everything is not going well in JD(U). Nitish Kumar is under the wrong impression that the people of the INDIA alliance will make him the convenor or PM candidate. Even his vote bank of EBC (Extremely Backward Classes) has been shifted to the BJP and the party has also closed all doors for Nitish Kumar. The BJP will win all 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar,” Mr. Modi told a media person at the Patna airport.
Mr. Kumar returned to Patna along with Mr. Singh on Sunday. The Bihar CM received a grand welcome at the Patna airport, where thousands of party workers and supporters had gathered to greet him.
The RJD’s Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha, who also reached Patna on Sunday, wondered why the media was taking so much interest when a routine change of guard had taken place in a political party.
