Sushil Modi plays up divergent views of Manjhi, Nitish

Aiming to create a fissure in the JD(U), senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi on Tuesday asked the ruling party to explain as to who between Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi and his predecessor Nitish Kumar represented the party's stand about its split with the NDA last year.

Manjhi has claimed in an interview that the JD(U) broke away from NDA after BJP included controversial issues, like Article 370 and Uniform Civil Code among others in its agenda even as his predecessor had said the reason for the split was anointment of a controversial person, namely Narendra Modi, as the BJP's face for 2014 general elections, he told reporters.

"Who between Manjhi and Kumar represents official line of the JD(U) on reasons behind its split from the NDA?" he asked and urged the ruling party to explain its stand amid differences of opinion between the "constitutional" Chief Minister (Manjhi) and the "actual" chief minister (Kumar). The former deputy chief minister, at the same time, slammed Manjhi for harping on the BJP's contentious agendas to justify his party's split from the NDA and said that those issues had remained integral to the BJP's agendas all these years when Nitish Kumar was part of the BJP-led alliance at the Centre and in Bihar.

Sushil Modi also sought to play up Manjhi's claim that Kumar may not be an automatic choice as the chief minister if JD(U) returned to power in the Assembly polls and this point was incorporated in a resolution by the JD(U) to placate angry voices within the party after Kumar quit chief minister's post last month and asked the JD(U) to make public its stand on chief ministerial choice after the Assembly polls.

On the ongoing election process for three Rajya Sabha seats in Bihar in which three independent candidates, including Dilip Jaiswal (BJP) has entered the fray, he said that his party was gathering facts of the matter and would decide on its course of action post withdrawal of nominations on June 12.

Sushil Modi also took potshots at RJD supremo Lalu Prasad for changing his stand frequently on his party's role for the by-poll for the three Rajya Sabha seats separately on June 19.