Senior Janata Dal (United) leader Sharad Yadav has said that he will present his faction as the “real” party, PTI reported on Sunday. He claims that a number of JD(U)’s state units are with him, while support for JD(U) President Nitish Kumar is confined to Bihar.
The JD(U) had replaced Yadav with Ramchandra Prasad Singh as the party’s leader in the Rajya Sabha on Saturday.
The Yadav-led faction includes two Rajya Sabha MPs and a few national office-bearers. Arun Shrivastava, his close aide, said the faction had letters of support from 14 state unit presidents and that the JD(U) has always had a national presence.
“We will not leave the party,” he told PTI. “Nitish Kumar himself says that the party does not exist outside Bihar. Then he should form a new party for Bihar. He should not try to capture the JD(U), which always had a national presence.”
Shrivastava also pointed out that it was Yadav who headed the JD(U) before Kumar merged his Samata Party with it.
Meanwhile, Yadav told NDTV that he would like to thank you the Bihar chief minister for playing the “perfect host”, but that he cannot accept his decision to ally with the Bharatiya Janata Party again. “We did some good work together,” the 70-year-old said. “I did a lot for Nitish and he did a lot for me. But I cannot accept the move to go back to the BJP.”
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