Bihar: BJP MLAs to remain present in Assembly during trust vote

Patna: BJP MLAs will be present in the Bihar Assembly during tomorrow’s trust vote, but whether they will participate in voting will be decided at an appropriate time, the party’s Bihar unit chief Sushil Kumar Modi said today. Modi said that all 88 members of the BJP legislature party would take part in the proceedings, but refused to divulge the party’s course of action regarding voting. [caption id=“attachment_1534369” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Jitan Ram Manjhi. PTI image[/caption] Jitan Ram Manjhi, who has succeeded Nitish Kumar as the new chief minister after the latter demitted office taking moral responsibility for the JD(U)’s debacle in general elections, will seek a confidence vote. The Manjhi government is expected to sail through as it has 145 MLAs consisting of JD(U)’s 117 members including the Speaker, RJD’s (21) MLAs, Congress’ four and three others as against 88 of the BJP. Modi attacked Kumar for deviating from his principled stand of opposing RJD and Congress to seek help of the two to prop up the minority JD(U) government. “Kumar stands totally exposed for giving up his principle by taking help of the Congress and the RJD to ensure survival of the fragile JD(U) government ahead of the trust vote by the Jitan Ram Manjhi government tomorrow,” Modi told reporters. He, however, said that he was not at all surprised at Nitish Kumar’s u-turn. He had known about Kumar’s collusion with the Congress and RJD earlier as the former chief minister had called on the Congress president’s political secretary, Ahmed Patel, to seek support of his party’s four MLAs to the JD(U) government soon after parting ways with the BJP in June last year. Modi dared these three parties to form a grand alliance for the Assembly polls due in November, next year and claimed that the proposed alliance would bite the dust once again as the people of Bihar did not want the return of the RJD’s ‘jungle raj’ at any cost. PTI