"Perplexed": Party Leader Calls Out Nitish Kumar On Delhi Tie-Up With BJP

Delhi Elections 2020: On Monday, the Akali Dal, the BJP's Punjab ally, had refused to tie up with the party in Delhi citing its reservations over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill or CAA.

Nitish Kumar's JDU is fighting Delhi polls with the BJP, Union Minister Amit Shah said last week. (File)

Patna/ New Delhi:

A senior leader of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United has confronted him over the party's alliance with the BJP for the Delhi election. In a letter to Nitish Kumar, Pavan K Varma said he is "deeply perplexed" by the development and is looking to him for "ideological clarity".

"On more than one occasion, you have expressed your grave apprehensions about the BJP-RSS combine," Pavan Varma said in the letter on Tuesday.

"If these are your real views, I fail to understand how the JDU is now extending its alliance with the BJP beyond Bihar, when even long standing allies of the BJP, like the Akali Dal, have refused to do so," he wrote.

On Monday, the Akali Dal, the BJP's Punjab ally, had refused to tie up with the party in Delhi citing its reservations over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill or CAA.

Making his letter public in a tweet, Mr Varma said he was "asking him how the JD(U) has formed an alliance with the BJP for the Delhi elections, given his own views on the BJP, and the massive national outrage against the divisive CAA-NPR-NRC scheme".

In the letter, Mr Varma reminded his party boss that in their first meeting in 2012, even before he had formally quit the Indian Foreign Service, "you had spoken to me at length and with conviction on why Narendra Modi and his policies are inimical for the country." He also referred to Mr Kumar's call for an "RSS-mukt bharat (RSS-free India)".

The RSS or Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is the ideological mentor of the ruling BJP.

"The cause for confusion arises from the fact that even after you changed tracks and aligned again with the BJP in 2017, your private apprehensions regarding the BJP did not change," says Mr Varma, even claiming that the Chief Minister "confessed" to him in private about the current BJP leadership humiliating him.

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