New Delhi, May 19: Inner-party rivalry in Samata Party again came to the fore today when party MP Brahmanand Mandal sought to draw Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's attention to the alleged threat given to a senior journalist by railway minister and party leader Nitish Kumar. In a letter to the Prime Minister, Mandal alleged that Kumar threatened a Patna-based representative of a National Daily not to write anything against Bihar.
Mandal, in his letter to Vajpayee, recalled that he had written to him in the past too that Kumar "has links with known criminal mafias of Bihar".
"Should a Union Cabinet Minister use such language or should he hold out such a threat to anybody," he asked and wondered if it was not subversion of democracy.
He charged the railway minister with "fomenting rank regionalism and creating conditions for outbreak of regional riots in which Biharis working in other states will become victims."
Mandal also released to reporters copies of his earlier letters to the prime minister alleging corruption in awarding railway contracts to mafia gangs, whose "closeness to Kumar is no more a secret".
He has been attacking Kumar openly and was suspended from the parliamentary party by Samata Party president George Fernandes.
Mandal and Raghunath Jha are the two Samata MP’s whose expulsion from the party has been sought by Kumar's supporters. As the developments threatened to split the party, Fernandes set up a disciplinary action committee to smoothen the rough edges. Bureau Report