Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has expressed his desire that he would like to serve as a Rajya Sabha member one day, triggering massive speculation about his political future.
While interacting with media persons in Patna, Kumar said he has served as a Lok Sabha member and became a cabinet Minister at the Centre. He also became an MLA and was elected as a Member of Legislative Council in Bihar and held the responsibility of Chief Minister of the state.
“I served in Lok Sabha, Vidhan Sabha and Vidhan Parishad in Bihar but never served as a Rajya Sabha member. It is my wish that I would serve as Rajya Sabha member one day. At present, I would not think of it,” the Janata Dal-United supremo added.
Kumar wants to match his political rival Lalu Prasad and friend Sushil Kumar Modi, who have served in both the Houses of Parliament and state Assembly.
The political analysts believe that Nitish Kumar never says anything without reason. He knew that the post of Vice-President will be vacant in the next few weeks. Therefore, he wants a respectful exit from the politics of Bihar.
During the 2020 Assembly election, Nitish Kumar’s party JD-U managed to win only 45 seats, at the third number in the ranking of number of seats. Still, he managed to bargain with the BJP and retained the position of Chief Minister of Bihar.
The alliance with the BJP is not that smooth in Bihar. The BJP has been targeting him on the issues of deteriorating law and order situation, poor implementation of the liquor ban, among many other issues for quite some time.
On Wednesday, a BJP MLA Vinay Bihari openly demanded his party’s top leadership to remove Nitish Kumar and promote Deputy Chief Minister Tar Kishore Prasad as Bihar’s Chief Minister.
Despite souring relations between the JD-U and BJP in Bihar, Nitish Kumar maintained a good relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and praised his governance in the country. Recently, during the swearing-in ceremony of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the way he greeted Modi became a talking point.
The Bihar Chief Minister said he will not contest the Lok Sabha election in the future, adding that he has been going to his native district of Nalanda since the last few days but he will not contest Lok Sabha election in future.
“The programme of visiting Bihar Sharif and Nalanda was planned two years ago. It was not a recent plan and has nothing to do with contesting Lok Sabha election. We are the one who asked veteran BJP leader George Fernandes to contest the Lok Sabha election from Nalanda in 1996. There is no need to contest elections from Nalanda,” Kumar added.
–IANS