Saturday, November 26 2005 19:39 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today (Nov 26,2005) asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to emulate Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in removing tainted ministers from the Union Cabinet.

"Prime Minister should take inspiration from Nitish Kumar and sack tainted ministers from his cabinet," party General Secretary Arun Jaitely told a BJP think tank meeting here.

Taking a dig, he remarked "There are many in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) itself who would support me on this as there would be a number of vacancies if the Prime Minister decides to drop the tainted ministers."

Within hours of his taking oath, Nitish had dropped Jitan Ram Manjhi from his Council of Ministers after finding that he was facing charges in a B.Ed degree scam in Bihar.

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP and former Union Minister Jaiprakash Narain Yadav is also facing charges in the same scam. Yadav had to quit from the Center for his alleged involvement in the 'illegal' release of his brother Vijay Prakash, who was contesting the assembly polls from Jamui.

He said the Bihar elections had dispelled many 'myths' including that the BJP was a party of upper caste and Ramvilas Paswan's LJP was a trouble for RJD.

"Majority of our legislators from Bihar are dalits. We have proved that we are not a party of single vote base and we understand that our vote base has expanded in the recent polls," Jaitely, in charge of party affairs in Bihar, said.

Finding fault with the perception that Paswan was causing trouble for Lalu Prasad's RJD and not the BJP, the BJP leader said that the close analysis of election result prove otherwise.

"In February polls, we lost atleast 18 seats because of Paswan. Where ever Paswan got more votes, we lost. If you closely analyse the February results, where ever Paswan was marginal, we won," Jaitely said.

The BJP spokesman said this time people 'neutralized' Paswan because he did not go with the aspiration of ousting the RJD regime last time.

"Last time, Paswan wanted to save his seat in the ministry and vote base at the same time. So he was indecisive and people replied to it this time," he said adding that NDA's success was due to its ability to garner anti-RJD votes which otherwise went to Paswan's basket.

Noting that the November polls was a paradigm shift in Hindi-belt politics, Jaitely said for the first time 'aspirational and developmental politics determined the fate of the state.'

"February vote in Bihar was a negative vote. This time it demolished the deep rooted perception that social polarization would fetch you votes," he said.

He said the 'early' announcement of Nitish as the Chief Ministerial candidate was beneficial for the alliance. Last time, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was reluctant to name any leader and only in thelast minute they announced that Nitish will lead the coalition.