- Digvijaya Singh said INDIA alliance erred in letting Nitish Kumar leave in 2024
- Sonia Gandhi stated Nitish Kumar was bound to exit the INDIA alliance anyway
- Mallikarjun Kharge confirmed Nitish sought to exit and only feigned interest in leading
As the Congress Working Committee met on Tuesday to discuss the party's strategy to corner Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the BJP, a former ally's mention by one of the members triggered a sharp retort from the party's matriarch Sonia Gandhi.
Sources told NDTV that during the discussions at the CWC meeting, senior leader Digvijaya Singh remarked that the INDIA alliance should not have let JD(U) chief and former Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar leave in 2024.
"The political situation would have been different," Singh told the meeting, according to sources present at the meeting.
But Singh's assertion regarding Kumar was promptly shot down by Sonia Gandhi, who, according to sources, said Nitish Kumar was bound to leave anyway. "He did not wish to remain in the INDIA alliance. It was for the best that he left when he did. That was where he was headed; he had been actively seeking ways to exit the INDIA bloc," Sonia Gandhi told the meeting.
Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge concurred with Sonia Gandhi's views and added: "While he had not intended to bring this up, he would mention that Nitish Kumar had indeed been looking for a way out of the INDIA bloc. His bid to become the convener of the INDIA bloc was merely a charade, given that he had previously told Kharge he wanted to remain active in state politics while supporting the INDIA bloc at the national level."
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Then Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar officially quit the INDIA opposition bloc on January 28, 2024, when he resigned as Chief Minister of the Mahagathbandhan government and returned to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
Kumar, who was seen as a primary architect in uniting opposition parties to form the INDIA bloc, reportedly grew frustrated by delays in finalising seat-sharing agreements and the failure to name him the coalition's convenor early on.
Reports had suggested that Nitish was also upset at being sidelined by the INDIA partners, particularly the Congress. The last nail in the coffin was presumably the moment when TMC chief Mamata Banerjee and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal proposed that Mallikarjun Kharge should be made the chairman of the INDIA bloc and would be the PM face in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
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Nitish Kumar's exit dealt a major strategic blow to the INDIA bloc ahead of the 2024 general elections, severely straining opposition unity.
Later detailing his exit, Nitish Kumar had said: "I was hurt. I left the INDIA alliance. I have been working hard to make a successful, meaningful (INDIA) alliance, but no one else (in the alliance) has been doing anything... I was making an all-out effort to make the INDIA bloc running, but I received no response. People are not happy," he told reporters.
"You all know how I came to this alliance and also how I worked to bring together so many parties. But of late, things were not working well. It was not going down well with those in my party as well... Nobody was doing anything after the alliance was formed. INDIA bloc failed my expectations," Nitish added.
