After Amit Shah phone call, Nitish Kumar, Bihar speaker meet a day after spat

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and assembly speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha skipped the assembly sitting on Tuesday after their ugly spat in the state assembly a day earlier but eventually met for 20 minutes.

A day after Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s angry outburst against assembly speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha, both leaders skipped the House session on Tuesday but held a “successful meeting” in the evening following hectic efforts to broker peace by state and central BJP leaders, which included a phone call from union home minister Amit Shah, senior party leaders said.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar lost his cool in his Bihar assembly on Monday when an issue relating to Lakhisarai, which is the speaker’s assembly constituency, was raised by a couple of members (PTI)

The meeting between the two took place after two senior ministers in the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government, deputy chief minister Tar Kishore Prasad and health minister Mangal Pandey, both from BJP, held talks with the Speaker and later with chief minister separately.

Prasad and Pandey were present in the meeting between Kumar and Sinha.

Kumar’s party Janata Dal (United) and Sinha’s party BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party) are the major constituents of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Bihar.

Speaker Sinha neither confirmed nor denied the call by Amit Shah. “A house is run under certain rules,” he said. Asked about his absence from House, the speaker said, “I have important pending assembly works to finish.”

On Monday, the House had witnessed an unprecedented outburst from the chief minister when an issue relating to Lakhisarai, which is the speaker’s assembly constituency, was raised by a couple of members.

The speaker has been miffed with some arrests in a case of prohibition violation in Lakhisarai and the privilege committee had last week recommended action against a couple of police officials who were allegedly disrespectful towards Sinha when he broached the matter with them.

Kumar, quivering with rage, said government was looking into the matter and it was wrong on part of Sinha to allow the matter to be raised inside the House “again and again”.

Hours later, the chief minister met the Governor, but there has been no word on what transpired.