Day after swipe at Nitish Kumar, BJP minister backtracks says 'working under his leadership'

A day after Bihar Minister and BJP leader Samrat Chaudhary said that the party had accepted Nitish Kumar as Chief Minister despite the JD(U) getting lesser seats, on Monday he stated that BJP is working under Kumar's leadership and there is no issue in that.

"We're working under the leadership of Nitish Kumar. We recognise him as the CM of Bihar. It's very clear. BJP is working under his leadership before & after elections. There is no issue in that," Samrat Chaudhary told ANI, clarifying his earlier statement.

On Sunday Chaudhary in Aurangabad had said that the party accepted Nitish Kumar as Chief Minister despite the JD(U) having 43 seats as opposed to BJP's 75 seats in the state legislative assembly.

While recalling BJP-JD(U) alliance results in 2000, Chaudhary said that this is not new and added, "The BJP has won 68-69 seats in 2000 while the JD(U) managed just 37, and despite this, the party has accepted Nitish Kumar as Chief Minister".

He further said that running the coalition government in Bihar was a challenging task as the NDA consists of four political parties with different ideologies.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and leader of Janta Dal (United) leader on Monday demanded an investigation into the Pegasus spyware scandal.

"A probe should be done, indeed. We have been hearing about telephone tapping for so many days, the matter should be discussed (in Parliament). People (Opposition) have been reiterating (for talks) for so many days, it should be done," Kumar said when asked if the matter should be investigated.

While Opposition parties have mounted an attack on the central government pressing it to conduct a discussion on the issue in Parliament, this is the first time that an ally of the BJP has demanded an investigation into the scandal. JD(U) is a coalition partner of the ruling National Democratic Alliance at the Centre.

In the recent election that was held in November last year in Bihar, the BJP had won 74 seats, JD-U 43, while eights seats were won by other National Democratic Alliance (NDA) constituents.

( With inputs from ANI )