Congress president Sonia Gandhi's memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, asserts that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was looking for a way to leave the INDIA Bloc, the opposition alliance he had helped bring together. The book, released on November 10 by HarperCollins India, describes Kumar as being under the control of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling party at the Centre.

The 544-page book covers Gandhi's personal life along with what she describes as turning points in Indian politics. Its account of the INDIA Bloc includes the alliance's formation and the internal difficulties it faced in the period before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. In the memoir, Kumar's exit is presented as part of wider problems of opposition unity rather than as an isolated event.

Kumar's position in the alliance had been a central element of its early history. He was among the leaders who worked to bring opposition parties onto a common platform, and his later decisions shaped the alliance's fortunes. In January 2024, he left the Grand Alliance and rejoined the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, and he subsequently formed a government in Bihar with the BJP. The memoir's claims about his motives come after those events.

The renewed attention on the subject also draws on a remark that has been circulating online and in political circles. It is linked to a Congress Working Committee meeting held on September 29 and 30. Reports of that closed-door meeting say that Digvijaya Singh argued the party should not have let Kumar leave. Gandhi is reported to have replied that the party was fortunate he left in time, and Mallikarjun Kharge is reported to have agreed that Kumar had wanted to leave from the start.

The remark's attribution rests on reports of a closed-door discussion, and its exact wording and context have not been independently verified. The source material also gives the date of the Working Committee meeting as September 2026, which is later than the book's release and the January 2024 exit, leaving the sequence of events unclear. The memoir's claims and the reported remark should therefore be read as accounts that have not been independently confirmed.

Source: punjabnewsexpress.com

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