RJD: Unlike BJP, we believe in mandate, not in poaching | India News – Times of India

PATNA: Bihar BJP chief and new deputy CM Samrat Chaudhary on Monday disclosed that the proposal for a tie-up with Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) had come from the latter as RJD was trying to poach lawmakers of the CM’s party.
“Recall what was being said by RJD leaders and functionaries. Even while they were part of the Grand Alliance government, they said JD(U) would be finished by 2024,” Chaudhary said at the state BJP headquarters here.

While Chaudhary attributed the poaching claims to former deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav — who declared after Nitish’s switch on Sunday that “JD(U) would be finished in 2024” — his comments seem to imply that RJD leaders were working behind the scenes to split the CM’s party. “Democracy was being shamed and attempts were made to split and break JD(U),” said Chaudhary, who was earlier with the Lalu Prasad-led RJD.
Chaudhary outlined how the alliance with JDU was revived over 17 months after Nitish dumped BJP in August 2022. “JD(U) presented before us a proposal that BJP support it in forming the new government. Its emissary (former JDU minister Sanjay Kumar Jha) came to us with the proposal,” he said.

RJD spokesperson Chitranjan Gagan hit back at Chaudhary’s allegations. “When Nitish Kumar left NDA in 2022, he had blamed BJP for trying to break the JD(U). Now they are putting the blame on RJD. But our party believes in mandate, unlike BJP which poaches legislators of its alliance parties,” Gagan said.
“Some of their leaders are blaming Congress, Nitish Kumar is saying he was not able to work with RJD and now Samrat Chaudhary has come up with a new excuse. I advise them to sit together and decide a reason they should give,” the RJD spokesperson added.
Chaudhary recalled that BJP had first aligned with Samata Party (forerunner of JDU) in the 1996 parliamentary elections. Later, after the formation of NDA, the two contested the next parliamentary elections. “In November 2005, NDA formed its government and ended the jungle raj (of RJD governments),” Chaudhary recalled.
According to the BJP leader, the “double-engine government of PM Narendra Modi and CM Nitish will fulfil the promise of providing 10 lakh jobs made by the two parties during the 2020 assembly elections.
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