For bigger prize (PM post), Nitish has to relinquish smaller things (CM chair): RJD Bihar chief

What is the RJD view on Nitish’s statement that Tejashwi should lead the 2025 Assembly election campaign? Was it in response to your suggestion that Nitish should start preparing for Mission 2024?

Jagdanand Singh: What I said in Delhi was selectively reported by the media. What I meant to say is that Nitish Kumar should take a lesson from VP Singh, who went to people after relinquishing his post (of Union minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s government). Ye Janata hai jo kisi ko Pradhan Mantri banati hai. VP Singh bhi tabhi bane the jab janata ne chaha tha. (It is the people who choose their PM. VP Singh too became the PM when people wanted him to be the PM).

Are you suggesting Nitish should relinquish his CM post to stitch together the Opposition for his Mission 2024?

Jagdanand Singh: Mai itna hi kahana chahta hoon ki badi cheez ko prapt karne ke liye chhoti cheez tyagni padti hai (I only want to say that to gain the bigger prize [the PM post], you have to leave behind the smaller things [the CM post]). One remembers how VP Singh energised the entire Opposition by launching the corruption allegations (the Bofors scandal against Rajiv Gandhi). We have to prepare very well to defeat a divisive force like the BJP. We have to get together with leaders like Mamata Banerjee, Naveen Patnaik, and others. It can’t be possible if one (Nitish) is stuck with smaller things.

Instead of saying that Tejashwi will lead the 2025 poll campaign, why didn’t Nitish pass on the CM seat to the RJD leader?

Jagdanand Singh: He didn’t say he wouldn’t make Tejashwi CM before 2025 either. But if Nitish goes to Delhi, Tejashwi will automatically be the Bihar CM. After all, one person can’t remain both the PM and the CM.

Is Tejashwi ready to lead Bihar at this stage?

Jagdanand Singh: Tejashwi was accepted as the leader in the 2020 Assembly polls itself. We were almost there. I don’t want to go into the reasons why we couldn’t win eventually … No one can stop Tejashwi from becoming a leader now. Could anyone succeed in stopping Lalu Prasad from becoming the CM in 1990, when he hadn’t even served as a minister before that? He emerged from among challengers like former CM Ram Sunder Das, from within the party.

What has started working for the RJD since the 2019 drubbing?

Jagdanand Singh: The media didn’t write enough on how our party, which had drawn nil in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, got so close to power (the Grand Alliance won 110 seats, and was left short of the majority by just 12 seats). It was not just because we had offered an alternative model of governance, including the promise of 10 lakh jobs and assurance of padhai (education), dawai (free medicines to the poor), kamai (income generation), and sunwai (hearing of public grievances). While we are talking about assimilative politics, it’s the media that has been talking about the M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) formula. One more important point is that after the three bypoll results, our vote share (the 2020 Grand Alliance) has now gone past that of the NDA.