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Nitish resumes work

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI JULY 17. The Samata Party leader, Nitish Kumar, today resumed his work as Railway Minister signalling the end of a crisis in the party which started with his resignation from the Union Cabinet on Monday. Having sorted out the differences last evening with the Parliamentary party members specially, Prabhunath Singh, whose comments sparked off the crisis, the Railway Minister "responded to the appeals'' by the party and others not to press for his resignation. "I regret that I could not keep my emotions under control causing inconvenience to all'', the Minister told correspondents before leaving for work.

Mr. Kumar, later told The Hindu, that he was under pressure from various quarters, senior party members, workers and even some leaders of allied parties. He said, for instance, the PMK Chief, S. Ramadoss, had called him from France suggesting that his party nominee in the Ministry, A.K. Moorthy, too would follow suit in case Mr. Kumar insisted on resigning.

Mr. Fernandes has asked Mr. Kumar to accompany him on a visit to Amarnath cave this weekend and interestingly, a similar invitation has been sent to Mr. Prabhunath Singh.

Mr. Prabhunath Singh along with party MPs, Arun Kumar and Bashisht Narain Singh, had a clearing-up session last evening. Mr. Prabhunath Singh insisted that so far he was concerned, he was only raising a point of order with regard to the expulsion of two MPs — Raghunath Jha and Bramhanand Mandal — while Mr. Kumar took objection to the manner in which the former walked out after raking it up. He was also upset that a case of two expelled MPs who had levelled charges of corruption against him was being taken up in an open forum.

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