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RJD has shut doors on Nitish, no alliance with JD(U) anymore: Tejashwi
After the Jokihat assembly bypoll result in which the RJD defeated JD(U), Tejashwi Yadav said his party would not ally with Nitish Kumar again. Terming Nitish ‘opportunist’, Tejashwi said the CM wins with the support of RJD cadres and later hobnobs with BJP and RSS.
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Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad’s son and leader of opposition in the Bihar assembly Tejashwi Yadav on Thursday said that the defeat of JD(U) candidate in Jokihat assembly bypoll was a total rejection of the ‘illegally formed NDA government’.
Shortly after the assembly bypoll result, Tejashwi also insisted that the RJD would not ally with chief minister Nitish Kumar again and has shut the doors on him.
“We will never ever have an alliance with the opportunist leader, who has a habit of winning with our cadres’ votes and later hobnobs with the BJP and RSS leaders. He is desperately exploring options to come back to us to stitch an alliance but he wouldn’t succeed anymore,” he said.
He also advised all disgruntled socialists in JD(U) to dump Nitish and join RJD to ‘form a better state and nation’. “Opposition unity has started showing its results across the country and it will benefit us in the 2019 general elections,” Tejashwi said.
Lalu Prasad’s heir apparent said the RJD has been winning from non-conventional seats which were never its strongholds. “Be it Araria, Jehanabad or Jokihat, we won bypolls for these seats defeating our rivals by huge margins,” he said.
Tejashwi said at Jokihat, his party candidate has secured more than double the votes than the JD(U) candidate. “In the last assembly poll, when JD(U) was with the Grand Alliance, the BJP candidate had secured 39,000 votes. With Nitish in NDA now, their candidate could only fetch 499 more votes, which we consider to be the votes for Nitish’s face value.”
Tejashwi, who is a former deputy CM, said the JD(U) has no influence on voters and the 71 seats it got in the 2015 assembly polls was primarily due to alliance with the RJD and the support of its cadre.
On increasing complaints of EVM tampering and malfunctioning, Yadav said he is not against technology but supports election through traditional system of ballots.
“When even America, the most advanced country, holds elections through ballot, why have we opted for a machine, which is causing disputes and raises suspicion all the time?” he said.
