The JD(U) Wednesday expelled its vice president Prashant Kishor and general secretary Pavan Varma from the party, after the two stepped up attacks on its alliance partner BJP over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Shortly after their sacking, both Kishor and Varma took to Twitter to thank party chief Nitish Kumar. "Thank you Nitish Kumar ji for freeing me from my increasingly untenable position of defending you and your policies. I wish you well in your ambition of being CM of Bihar at any cost," said Kumar. Thank you Nitish Kumar ji for freeing me from my increasingly untenable position of defending you and your policies. I wish you well in your ambition of being CM of Bihar at any cost. — Pavan K. Varma (@PavanK_Varma) January 29, 2020 Thank you @NitishKumar. My best wishes to you to retain the chair of Chief Minister of Bihar. God bless you.🙏🏼 — Prashant Kishor (@PrashantKishor) January 29, 2020 The rift between Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, who is the JD(U) chief, and poll strategist Prashant Kishor was out in the open Tuesday with the latter accusing the JD(U) supremo of “lying” after Kumar claimed that he was inducted into the party on the recommendation of Union Home Minister Amit Shah. A JD(U) statement, issued by party's chief general secretary K C Tyagi, said that these two were "acting against party's decisions as well as its functioning", which amounted to breach of discipline. Kumar had earlier distanced himself from the controversy over Kishor engaging in a “twitter war with Amit Shah” over the CAA and proposed nationwide NRC. Last week, the party's general secretary Pavan Varma went public with a letter he had written to Kumar. Questioning his party’s decision to extend its alliance with the BJP “beyond Bihar” and fight the Delhi Assembly elections together, Varma, who was also the party’s national spokesperson, sought “ideological clarity” from Kumar who he said had expressed “grave apprehensions” in private about the BJP leading the country into a “dangerous space”. In the letter, Varma said Kumar “on more than one occasion” had expressed “grave apprehensions about the BJP-RSS combine” and that “you had spoken to me at length and with conviction on why Narendra Modi and his policies are inimical for the country. When you were leading Mahagathbandhan, you had openly made a call for ‘RSS-mukt Bharat’.” Kumar had responded saying Varma is "free to go wherever he wants".
