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(Pi Bureau)
New Delhi: Amid tensions and standoff between JD(U) and the RJD , Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will meet Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in the national capital on Saturday as the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar seems to be going on tough road .
Nitish, who will be in Delhi to attend a farewell dinner for outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee, is scheduled to meet Rahul Gandhi at 4 pm.
The meeting comes amid a running feud between Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD over corruption allegations against the latter and his son, Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav. While the JD(U) has demanded Yadav’s resignation, Lalu has said Tejashwi will not step down.
Fissures in the Bihar Grand Alliance came to the fore after the CBI booked Lalu, son Tejashwi and wife Rabri Devi in a corruption case. Lalu has been accused of influencing the awarding of an IRCTC tender when he was the railway minister in 2005 and accepting prime land in return. The land was allegedly transferred to Tejashwi and Rabri via a shell company.
The Congress – third member of the alliance – has been playing peacemaker in the standoff between Bihar’s two major parties.
On Friday, the JD(U) had hit back at a senior RJD leader who had ruled out Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav’s resignation over a graft case and made light of the party’s claim of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s “sacrifice” in forming the anti-BJP coalition in Bihar.
Abdul Bari Siddiqui, a minister in the Grand Alliance government, had yesterday dismissed any possibility of Yadav’s resignation over the CBI FIR in the land-for-hotels case and had said, “Tell us who made the sacrifice so that we can pay obeisance by lighting aggarbatti.”
