Patna, March 08: Nitish Kumar and Mamata Banerjee — on either side of two antagonistic formations in the country’s power politics — have turned into friends, thanks to their common enmity with Lalu Prasad.
“Notwithstanding the political divide, Nitish has befriended Mamata. He praises everything that Didi does and in the process uses the railway minister as a potent political gun to target and hurt his arch rival Lalu,” said a senior Congress leader describing the Bihar chief minister as a “crafty leader”.
The Congressman’s remark is not wide off the mark for Nitish instantly praised Mamata soon after she replaced Lalu as the railway minister last year and announced to bring out a white paper on the functioning of the railways under the “turnaround man”.
Mamata negated the achievements of Lalu in the white paper, earning further accolades from Nitish. “Mamataji has exposed the statistical jugglery that Lalu resorted to depict himself as a turnaround man,” Nitish said, winning Mamata’s heart and hitting the RJD boss where it hurts more.
And while Lalu described Mamata’s budget (2010-11) as “gross injustice to Bihar”, the chief minister once again came out with effusive praise for the railway minister. “She has talked about the vision of the railways. She has presented a good budget,” Nitish said.
Going by the allocations in the railway projects in the state, it appears that Mamata has taken care of Nitish’s “political constituency” more than Lalu’s who has been relentlessly fretting and fuming at her.
For instance, Mamata has sanctioned a paltry Rs 1 crore each to Lalu’s pet projects that include Dalmiyanagar couplers factory and Sonepur-based wagon factories.
Moreover, her budget has decided to build an electric locomotive factory at Madhepura and diesel locomotive factory at Marhaura under the public-private-partnership (PPP) model at which Lalu was extremely annoyed.
“What is the use of allocating just Rs 1 crore each to the two big projects?” Lalu said, adding: “Introducing PPP model for the other two projects too amounts to aborting these. I do not think that the private operators will easily come to join the railways under PPP to complete these projects,” the RJD boss said.
On the other hand, Mamata has given more preference to the projects which were launched when Nitish was railway minister.
She has allocated Rs 40 crore, Rs 65 crore and Rs 70 crore to the Kosi bridge, Munger bridge and the approach road of Digha-Sonepur bridge, respectively — all inaugurated during Nitish’s tenure.
“She is biased and probably that is why Nitish has appreciated her budget,” Lalu said.
The buzz is that “crafty” Nitish has been using “temperamental” Mamata to good effect to further weaken Lalu in the poll-bound state