Congress rushes Ghulam Nabi Azad to poll-bound Bihar for talks

With the issue of alliance becoming a key factor in poll-bound Bihar, Congress has rushed senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad there to hold consultations with the state leaders.

All India Congress Committee sources said that party president Sonia Gandhi has dispatched Azad to Patna and he had already held deliberations with Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee chief Ashok Chaudhary there.
AICC General Secretary CP Joshi is in charge of the party affairs in Bihar, but the talks in the party is that Azad could look after the affairs in the state till the Assembly polls, scheduled by October.

A sizable section of the state Congress leaders including the PCC Chief as also AICC General Secretary Shakeel Ahmed are backing Nitish Kumar as the chief ministerial face of a secular alliance in Bihar Assembly polls. But it is said that the fate of the grouping depend upon a tie-up between JD(U) and RJD.

On the other hand, RJD Vice President Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, who had openly expressed his reservations against declaring Kumar's name as the CM candidate of the alliance outraging the JDU, had appealed to Congress President Sonia Gandhi to hammer out a solution and give shape to the anti-BJP alliance in Bihar. The refrain of the AICC is that the party is in discussions with "multiple political parties to form a united alliance of secular parties against the BJP".