By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,
Patna: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will be the state guest of Bihar when he will be visiting the state capital Patna to attend the Bharatiya Janata Party national executive meeting to be held on June 12 and 13. Bihar CM Nitish Kumar’s decision may be seen as a shift in his thinking though he has always tried to distance himself from Modi.
While Nitish says the BJP executive meeting is their “internal affair” he has decided to accord the status of state guest to Modi along with L K Advani.
One may ask why state guest status to Modi? Is it because he is chief minister? Then why not similar status to half a dozen other BJP chief ministers who will also be attending the BJP meet in Patna? Or does Nitish think Modi deserves special status because he earned global ‘fame’ for his involvement in the pogrom?
In public Nitish may avoid shaking hands or sharing dais with Modi, but he may not help when he will be hosting dinner to the BJP leaders later this week. Nitish’s party JDU will be hosting a dinner for all BJP executive members at the CM’s official residence. The invitees include Modi and party general secretary Varun Gandhi.
However, the JDU is trying hard to publicly distance itself from the meet as it is being held in election year (Bihar will face assembly elections in coming November) and the party cannot afford to antagonize the minorities. “It was the BJP’s decision to hold its national executive meet in Patna. There is nothing we can do about it,” said JDU national spokesperson Shivanand Tiwari.
Nitish had earlier distanced himself from Modi for his alleged role in the Gujarat pogrom of 2002. Due to his reservations, Modi had to stay away from campaigning in Bihar in last year’s Lok Sabha polls. But soon after the result Nitish rushed to Haryana to attend a National Democratic Alliance rally where he shook hands and shared dais with Modi. In May this year, Nitish had stated that there was no need to invite Modi for campaigning before the state assembly polls in November. But once again there is a shift as he is giving the state guest status to same Modi.