Law Kumar Mishra
Patna, December 7
Senior BJP leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said he preferred suggestions of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over the then Union Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee on economic affairs.
Modi was on Monday declared elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha. Returning officer Sanjay Agarwal handed over the certificate of election to Sushil Modi in presence of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, two deputy CMs and cabinet colleagues of Nitish.
Monday was the last day for withdrawal of nomination papers and since Sushil Modi was the only candidate left in the fray, he was declared elected unopposed. With this, Sushil Modi has got the distinction of becoming members of all the four Houses of state legislature and Parliament. He was elected to Bihar assembly from Patna Central in 1990, in 2004 elected to Lok Sabha from Bhagalpur, since 2006, he was member of the Bihar legislative Council.
Immediately after his election, Sushil Modi, affirmed his faith in Nitish Kumar and claimed he learnt a lot while working with him as his deputy for 15 years. He recalled he preferred the suggestion of Nitish Kumar and ignored the recommendation of Pranab Mukherjee, who was the union finance minister.
Sushil Modi said Mukherjee had asked him to head the group of ministers on GST, which he declined, but later Nitish Kumar telephoned him and asked him to accept the offer, he relented and obeyed Nitish.
He claimed it was his privilege to work under Nitish Kumar for 15 years as deputy chief minister of Bihar and contributed in the development of Bihar.”My contribution may be small, but I did try to develop the state”.
Sushil Modi said now as MP, he would work further for the development of the state by negotiating with different ministries at the Centre. He would take up with different departments the pending issues of Bihar.
Sushil Modi would be given an official send off by the state unit of BJP at party headquarters on Tuesday morning.
The by-election was caused following the death of the union food and consumer affairs minister, Ram Vilas Paswan, who was elected in 2019 with BJP support on the seat vacated by the union law and justice minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Ravi Shankar was elected to Lok Sabha from Patna Saheb constituency.
Neither the Grand Alliance nor the LJP fielded any candidate leading to Sushil Mod getting elected uncontested.
