By not renominating Union Steel minister and party leader Ramchandra Prasad Singh to the Rajya Sabha, party chief and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has changed the power equation within the party and had also given a message to the alliance partner the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Bihar. The JD(U) decided to nominate Jharkhand state unit president Kheru Mahto for the lone Rajya Sabha seat it is getting.
Sources within the party had confirmed to The Daily Guardian Review that now with the latest development it is certain that Nitish Kumar is going to continue as the chief minister till 2024 and all the speculations of him going to New Delhi were far from the truth. The party had also witnessed a major change now as a group of advisors had taken the space of RCP Singh who was considered as the super CM in Bihar due to his proximity to the CM.
One party leader said, “the day RCP Singh became a minister without Nitish Kumar’s consent, his political inning was over, now Lalan Singh, Sanjay Jha, Ashok Choudhary, Vijay Choudhary and Upendra Kushwaha are within the inner circle of Nitish Kumar. Previously it was all RCP Singh show.”
Talking to The Daily Guardian Review, Devesh Chandra Thakur, the deputy leader of the JD (U) in the Bihar Legislative Council said, “We need not to read much, RCP Singh is a senior leader of the party. The selection of Rajya Sabha candidates was taken by our leader keeping the larger picture in consideration as our party wants to grow outside the state, hence both the candidates are from outside Bihar.”
After being denied the Rajya Sabha berth, it looks certain that the bureaucrat turned politician is going to lose his Union steel ministry portfolio.
Out of the five seats of Rajya Sabha which were vacant from Bihar, the JD(U) had got one seat, while the BJP which got two seats had decided to nominate Satish Chandra Dubey and Shambhu Sharan Patel while the main opposition party the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) decided to nominate Misa Bharti and former MLA Faiyaz Ahmed.