Nitish on Modi: Country needs a leader who can unite, not divide

In a veiled attack on Narendra Modi days after JD(U) split from NDA, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Friday asserted that the country needs a leader who can unite and not a ‘divisive’ figure.

‘We had already told the BJP about our apprehensions. We cannot have a man who is a divisive figure. Our diverse country needs a man who can unify,’ Kumar told CNN-IBN.

JD(U) broke its 17-year-old alliance with the NDA in the wake of BJP anointing Modi as chief of the party’s election campaign committee for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

‘A personality-oriented atmosphere has been created in BJP now. All the discussions now centre around that,’ Kumar said.

Kumar was all guns blazing over BJP’s decision on Modi.

‘First, you make it a personality driven affair and after a hue and cry, you say we are opposing the person. But do the people not understand the agenda behind this,’ he said.

‘There should not be polarisation. The polarising figure should not overshadow the issues confronting the country...Can the development model of a developed state like Gujarat become the model for the entire country? There are many backward regions in the country,’ he said.

Asked about his 2003 statement praising Modi, Kumar said, ‘After the 2003 statement, there was 2005 election in Bihar.

Why did not they call him to Bihar? Why did not they ask him to come in 2009?...I have also talked about what happened in 2002 in that speech.’.

Accusing the BJP of creating a ‘new dispute’ by anointing Modi, Kumar said everything till then was going fine between JD(U)’s alliance with BJP in Bihar and its relations with NDA at the Centre.

Kumar scoffed at BJP’s hopes of coming to power in the next general elections.

‘This is the time of coalition. Even if you take the NDA together, there is no chance of majority for the alliance, forget about the BJP getting majority on its own.

‘We have said that if you have to lead an alliance, then you have to give an unblemished leadership,’ he said in an apparent reference to the 2002 Gujarat riots when Modi was the Chief Minister.

Kumar said BJP as the largest party of NDA should declare its leader before the election. ‘This has been the tradition.

But the leader must be one who knows how to take all the allies together.’ 

He recalled that under Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s leadership, NDA had 24 allies at one point.

Asked about Modi’s elecation, he said the BJP was free to do whatever it wanted within the party. He said in 2004, Pramod Mahajan was made incharge of the BJP election campaign committee and Arun 

Jaitley in 2009. ‘But there was no such ‘taajposhi’ (coronation)’ at that time’ 

Accusing the BJP of ‘deviating’ from all the core issues of NDA’s national agenda, Kumar said the ‘euphoria’ created today was ‘meaningless’.

Kumar said the mandate his party got in Bihar was for the developmental work done in the state, not because of any external factor.