NEW DELHI: Janata Dal (United) on Wednesday launched a sharp attack against veteran Congress leader Sonia Gandhi after she reportedly criticised Nitish Kumar for leaving the opposition alliance. Union minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh said that the former Bihar chief minister “does not need Sonia’s certificate” and his work over the past 20 years speaks for itself.“We do not wish to react to the remark Sonia Gandhi made about Nitish Kumar because Nitish Kumar does not need Sonia Gandhi’s certificate… Nitish Kumar has served the people of Bihar for 20 years on the strength of his work and has transformed the picture of Bihar. Today, he is discussed not only across the entire country but also in the world”“When Nitish Kumar was in the INDI Alliance for a few days, he had said in it that the INDI Alliance should pass a proposal for a caste-based census, but on Mamata Banerjee’s insistence, Sonia Gandhi said that there is no need for this,” Singh claimed.This comes after media reports claimed that Sonia Gandhi rejected Digvijay Singh remarks in the Congress Working Committee meeting on Tuesday after he said that INDIA bloc should not have let Nitish leave in 2024.According to the reports, Sonia claimed that Nitish was bound to leave the alliance and his bid to become a INDIA bloc’s convenor was merely a charade.Meanwhile, JD(U) working president Sanjay Kumar Jha said that Digvijay Singh’s remarks show that Congress realised Nitish’s important, although late.“Congress has realised the importance of Nitish Kumar. The people of the country and Bihar already knew this. Nitish ji’s work is in the public domain and the truth is that, albeit late, Congress has now understood this,” Jha said.Nitish Kumar, then Bihar chief minister, quit the INDIA bloc on January 28, 2024, and returned to the BJP-led NDA.Reports at the time suggested that Nitish was increasingly unhappy with his treatment within the opposition alliance, particularly by the Congress. His discontent deepened after Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal proposed Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge as the chairman of the INDIA bloc and as its possible prime ministerial face for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.“I was hurt. I left the INDIA alliance. I have been working hard to make a successful, meaningful (INDIA) alliance, but no one else (in the alliance) has been doing anything… I was making an all-out effort to make the INDIA bloc running, but I received no response.
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People are not happy,” Nitish had said after switching alliance.“You all know how I came to this alliance and also how I worked to bring together so many parties. But of late, things were not working well. It was not going down well with those in my party as well… Nobody was doing anything after the alliance was formed. INDIA bloc failed my expectations,” Nitish had added.
