A Rs 5-crore question

Gujarat govt will give cheque of Rs 5 crore as donation towards flood relief to Nitish Kumar

Gujarat Revenue Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama is slated to arrive in Patna on Thursday to give Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar a cheque of Rs 5 crore as donation towards flood relief. The move has given Janata Dal-United’s (JD-U) ally-turned-rival Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) more ammunition to run down Kumar and his party. The RJD cites a 2010 incident when Kumar returned a cheque of the same amount that then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi had offered him; Kumar had also cancelled a dinner organised for the Bharatiya Janata Party brass. Pointing out that circumstances are different in 2017, JD-U leaders insisted that the Gujarat government had been “sensitive” towards Bihar and that some other states were also thinking of offering aid to Bihar in its flood relief work.