The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday reappointed Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) leader and former BJP state vice-president Rajendra Pugh as Bihar’s NDA voters are increasingly divided over alcohol prohibition Rajendra Prasad Singh.
Singh ran for parliamentary elections as an LJP candidate from the Dinara seat in Rohtas district and pushed Janata Dali-United (JD-U) leader and Science and Technology Minister Jai Kumar Singh in Nitish Kumar’s cabinet to third place. He rejoined the BJP in the presence of party state president Sanjay Jaiswar at his residence here, dealing a blow to the JD-U and LJP.
Rajendra Singh described his re-entry in BJP as coming home. “Call it stupidity or anger, I chose to run for the greater good of the people in my constituency. In accordance with the wishes of the people, I went back to my original party with my supporters,” said Singh, who in 2020 Vijay Mandar of Rashtria Janata Dhar (RJD) lost by 8,228 votes in the parliamentary elections. Singh has worked for the RSS and sister organisations for nearly four decades, and served as the mantra for the BJP’s Kanshi and Awadh parties in Uttar Pradesh (2004-2013), maha Mantri for the Jharkhand organisation (2013 and 2015) 2019) and BJP State Vice President (2019-20). He left the party after being rejected in the 2020 parliamentary elections.
BJP state president Jaswar welcomed him to the party, calling Rajendra Singh the supreme leader of South Bihar. “He has served the party in various capacities in the past. Burying all the differences that have arisen in the past, he has joined us and we welcome him wholeheartedly,” Jaswal told media sources.
When contacted, Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) Bihar President Raju Tiwari and former Govindganj (East Champaran) MLA tried to play down the matter. “Rajendra Prasad became inactive in the LJP after the parliamentary polls. It is now clear that he joined us for his vested interests,” Tiwari said.
Meanwhile, the BJP and JD-U have widened their differences over alcohol prohibition in the state. BJP state president Jaswar parked JD-U in the dock, accusing the Nalanda district government of condoning the alcohol mafia.
“My question to JD-U is if all the members of the 11 families who died in the hooch tragedy in Nalanda were sent to prison…in the eyes of the party, it would be a crime to comfort these families,” Jaiswal, A doctor and three-term MP from the West Champaran Lok Sabha seat said in a Facebook post on Sunday that it caused ripples in politics as the BJP is the biggest ally in the four-party NDA coalition led by JD-U’s Nitish Kumar.
Jaiswal’s posturing was in reaction to a recent social media post by JD(U) spokesman Abhishek Jha, in which he questioned the BJP state chief’s visit to the homes of victims of the hooch tragedy in the latter constituency.
Complete News Source : Hindustan Times
