New Delhi: Reacting to the comments made about him by Bihar Chief Minister and party chief Nitish Kumar, Janta Dal-United (JD-U) vice president Prashant Kishor on Tuesday said that he would "come to Bihar" to answer the party leader.
"Nitishji has spoken, you should wait for my answer. I will come to Bihar to answer him," Kishor told ANI.
Kishor has been publicly objecting to the JD-U supporting the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that has been dubbed by many legal experts and lawmakers as "unconstitutional" for allegedly being discriminatory on religious grounds against a particular community.
Earlier, while responding to a media query on Prashant Kishor, Nitish Kumar said in Patna: "Someone (a reference to party leader Pavan Varma) wrote a letter and I replied to it. Someone is tweeting, let him tweet. What do I have to do with it? One can stay in the party as long as he/she wants. They can go if they want to." Nitish Kumar further said: "Do you know how did he (Kishor) join the party? Amit Shah had asked me to induct him." Kishor has more than once made his differences with the party known on the issue of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The JD-U supported the legislation in both Houses of Parliament.
Last month, when ANI had asked Kishor about his party's support to the controversial CAA, he said that only party chief Nitish Kumar can explain as to under what circumstances the JD-U supported the Citizen (Amendment) Bill, 2019 in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
The Congress and several other non-NDA parties opposed the Bill in Parliament that sought to give Indian citizenship to only non-Muslim people fleeing religious persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and who arrive in India before January 1, 2015, on the grounds that it discriminates don religious grounds wh9ich is against India's Constitution.
However, the government succeeded in getting it passed with the help of various other parties, including the JD-U. Protests are raging against the new citizenship law across the country.
On January 24 this year, Nitish Kumar had hit out at senior party leader and retired diplomat Pavan K Varma over a letter written by the latter to Kumar about JD-U's alliance with BJP in Delhi Assembly elections, and went on to say that Varma was free to join any party he liked.
