New Delhi: Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav has advised leaders of his Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) to refrain from speaking on the issue of Chief Ministership as he stressed that he was not in a hurry to occupy the highest seat of power in the state.
In a recent statement in Delhi, RJD state president Jagadanand Singh said that the young leader will become the chief minister by next year. It appears to have consternated some leaders in the JD(U), the party of the incumbent CM Nitish Kumar.
“I have no personal ambition nor am I in a hurry. Supporters tend to go overboard but this is not the time when we should be thinking who will be the CM in the future,” Yadav told reporters on Friday, as quoted by news agency PTI.
“We must remain focused on dislodging from power Fascist forces represented by the BJP. We have accomplished that in Bihar. The same needs to be achieved nationally,” he added.
Tejashwi emphasised that Nitish Kumar is the Chief Minister and the leader of the multi-party Mahagathbandhan. According to him, Nitish also wants to defeat the BJP without wanting anything for himself in return.
“We all must rise to the occasion,” Tejashwi said.
RJD’s Jagadanand Singh had said on Thursday that Nitish Kumar will devote himself to national politics by 2023 when Tejashwi Yadav will take over as his successor.
In response, JD(U) parliamentary board chief Upendra Kushwaha took a dig at the veteran RJD leader and likened him to an “aging father who is desperate to marry off his children some way or the other”.
Kushwaha also asserted that the state RJD president’s words did not mean to indicate any rift with the JD(U) and discarded the claim of BJP leaders like former deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi that a “deal” has been struck between the two Mahagathbandhan partners.
Sushil Modi has claimed that CM Nitish Kumar, after ditching BJP, survived in power courtesy of the “deal” with RJD supremo Lalu Prasad who agreed to support the JD(U) leader though his own party’s strength in the assembly was nearly twice as much as that of the latter