Nitish Kumar on Sushil Modi's vice-president remark: 'Joke, bogus'

Nitish Kumar, who took the oath as the Bihar Chief Minister on Wednesday for a record eighth time, dismissed Sushil Kumar Modi's charge that he approached the BJP for the post of vice president of India, saying he never had the desire to hold the post and that Modi's remark was a bogus joke.  

"You heard a man (Sushil Modi) say that I wanted to be Vice President. What a joke! It's bogus. I had no such desire. Did they forget how much our party supported them? Let them talk against me so that they get a position again," he said.

Nitish Kumar wanted to be the vice-president of the country and has national ambitions, BJP MP Sushil Kumar Modi said on Wednesday as he listed possible reasons for the JDU chief to split with the BJP. Modi said Nitish Kumar didn't drop any hints as to the discontent he had with his ally BJP, and he dismissed media reports suggesting he was in talks with RJD when Union Minister Amit Shah enquired. The Rajya Sabha MP said it was his party that made Kumar the Bihar Chief Minister despite getting just 43 seats, way below the BJP tally.

Sushil Kumar Modi, believed to be close to Kumar when he was the Deputy CM, said when Shah asked Kumar if he had any problem, he replied in the negative and blamed Lalan Singh for speculation about his forging an alliance with Lalu Yadav's party. 

"We had not sensed much discomfort in JD(U). Even when Union home minister Amit Shah talked to Nitish Kumar on phone Monday and asked if there was any problem, Nitish ji did not say anything and said ‘Just as you have Giriraj Singh in your party, we have Lalan Singh’," The Indian Express quoted Modi as saying. 

He claimed Nitish Kumar's aides had approached the BJP saying he wanted to become the Vice-President of India. 

Sushil Kumar Modi said Nitish Kumar dumped BJP as he couldn't be the prime ministerial candidate because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said he quit because he nursed national ambition.