Former Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi-led Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) on Monday announced that it is withdrawing its support to the Nitish Kumar-led Mahagathbandhan government.
The development comes just days after his son Santosh Kumar Suman tendered his resignation from the Bihar cabinet on June 14.
Notably, Nitish had on Friday accused Manjhi of spying on the Grand Alliance for the Bharatiya Janata Party and claimed that he had asked Manjhi to either merge his party with the JD(U) or quit the alliance.
“I had asked Manjhi to either merge his party with the JDU or quit the alliance. He was continuously in touch with the BJP and had recently met its leaders and was passing on information about us to them. He did not accept the merger proposal and quit. He would have continued with it had he stayed with us,” Nitish said.
Referring to the meeting of Opposition parties scheduled to be held in Patna on June 24, Nitish claimed that Manjhi wanted to participate in it. “All the parties would have discussed their own stand at the conclave. The BJP would have come to know everything had they (Manjhi and other HAMS leaders) remained with us,” the Chief Minister said on Friday.
Suman, who served as the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe welfare minister, said he quit the cabinet for the sake of the survival of his party because Nitish was putting pressure to merge HAM(S) with the JD(U). On Friday, he was replaced by JDU MLA Ratnesh Sada, a leader from the same caste as Suman.
Notably, Manjhi had announced that his party was withdrawing support to the Grand Alliance on Friday. He also thanked Nitish for relieving him of the promise to always support him and the JD(U).