Nitish bid to silence detractors

By Our Staff Correspondent

PATNA, JAN. 6. The Union Agriculture Minister, Mr. Nitish Kumar, who sent his resignation from the Union Cabinet to the Defence Minister, Mr. George Fernandes, today, cleverly utilised the organisational elections to demonstrate his strength to silence his detractors and assert his supremacy within the Samata Party in no uncertain terms, ahead of the party's two-day national council meeting beginning in Mysore on Monday.

Taking a leaf from the book of the RJD supremo, Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav, and the newly-formed Lok Janshakti chief and Telecommunications Minister, Mr. Ram Vilas Paswan, Mr. Kumar executed his strategy not only to take control of the party but to ``eliminate'' the ``troublesome'' elements to be the only rallying point in the organisation.

Mr. Kumar's role at the national council meeting, being convened to elect a new president and the national executive will hence be important. Mr. Kumar has already made the nominations to the national council of those representing Bihar and Jharkhand.The significance of yesterday's meeting was that it was held despite Mr. Fernandes' plea for putting off not only the ``official'' meeting but also the parallel one held by the dissident MPs.

Obviously, Mr. Kumar had not taken this intervention of Mr. Fernandes lightly. He however denied any such move saying Mr. Fernandes could have conveyed the proposal to him rather than through the Union Minister of State for Railways, Mr. Digvijay Singh. Mr. Kumar perceived the mediation as a spoke in his scheme of things, more so because Mr. Fernandes was eager to extract a written assurance from the former to eschew the proposal of merger of the Samata with the Janada Dal (U) headed by the Civil Aviation Minister, Mr. Sharad Yadav.

The question doing the political circles here is whether Mr. Kumar sought to snub Mr. Fernandes and challenge his authority in the party. The manner in which Mr. Kumar went through the motions betrayed his impression about the dissidents having Mr. Fernandes' blessings.

All decisions at yesterday's state council meeting were significant and that too in the presence of the central observer. The delegates authorised Mr. Kumar to nominate the state president, the state executive and members of the national council and not anybody else, including the party president, Ms. Jaya Jaitley. It was also clear that the delegates regarded Mr. Kumar as their leader, though he held no organisational post, and they bothered little for others.

While keeping in abeyance his decision on the nomination of the state president and the state executive, Mr. Kumar announced the list of members of the national council. Ironically, he nominated Mr. Fernandes as a member of the national council.

His action was not lost on political observers in the continuing cold war between the two. Was it Mr. Kumar's way of telling Mr. Fernandes that he owed his existence not to the latter but vice versa? Though the differences between them had been simmering for long, neither had dared to bring it to the open .

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