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Kanhaiya Kumar, the fiery young leader, who first made it to the headlines when he was a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), is now being tracked for his tryst with mainstream politics. He is reported to have met with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s aide, giving rise to political speculation. Even though he is not of the same ideology, Kanhaiya has not really been sharply critical towards Janata Dal-United (JDU) leader Nitish Kumar who is an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). So when the young politician, hailed as the “the CPI’s rising star in Bihar ” on Sunday, met an “old acquaintance” Ashok Choudhary, who is a minister and aide of the CM, political grapevine was abuzz.
Meanwhile, it is important to note that a Delhi court Monday took cognisance of the chargesheet of the 2016 JNU Sedition Case,and summoned Kumar and the other nine accused to appear on March 15, 2021 reported the Hindustan Times. This summon comes a year after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led Delhi government cleared the path for the prosecution of those accused of Sedition. Ironically the AAP had refused to grant this permission in September 2019. After the Delhi Government granted sanction for his trial, Kanhaiya Kumar had questioned the timing of the move and alleged that this was being done with an eye on Bihar elections that were due that year, saying, “According to law the charge sheet should be filed within 90 days. They took years and timed the filing of the chargesheet with the Lok Sabha elections. Now, Vidhan Sabha elections are coming up and they have sanctioned a trial.”
Kumar, along with others named, was accused of raising seditious slogans at the JNU campus on February 9, 2016, during an event to mark the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. According to a report in the Indian Express, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (Patiala House Courts) Dr Pankaj Sharma, took cognisance of the chargesheet against Kumar, Syed Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya, Aquib Hussain, Mujeeb Hussain Gattoo, Muneeb Hussain Gattoo, Umar Gul, Rayees Rasool, Basharat Ali and Khalid Bashir Bhatt, and said, “The sanction to prosecute accused persons has already been filed by the Home Department, GNCT [Delhi government], dated February 27, 2020. After careful perusal of the chargesheet and consideration of the material, all the accused persons are summoned to face trial and they have been summoned through investigation officer for March 15, 2021.”
The accused have been charged under IPC sections 124A (sedition), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 465 (forgery), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record), 143, 149 (being a member of an unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting) and 120B (criminal conspiracy). As reported earlier, it was in February 2020, that Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said if the BJP were to be voted to power, it would grant prosecution sanction against Kumar and Khalid, as well as JNU PhD student Sharjeel Imam, “within one hour” of forming the government. Later that month, the AAP government gave police the sanctions needed to prosecute the accused.
According to the news report, now Choudhary’s meeting with Kanhaiya, has taken place “at a time when the charismatic young politician is said to have been left mortified by a censure motion that the CPI recently passed against him. The party action had followed alleged manhandling of a key CPI official attached to the state headquarters here.”
Earlier, it was reported that Kumar and his party had some tension brewing between them during the Lok Sabha elections when the CPI reportedly “insisted” that Kumar share a part of money he had raised through crowd-funding. He had fought and lost elections from his home constituency Begusarai, Union minister and BJP leader Giriraj Singh had emerged winner.
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