At a time when the CBI summoned Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav in the Land for jobs scam on Saturday, a day after ED recovered Rs 53 lakh cash, USD 1,900, about 540 grams of gold and bullion and 1.5 kg of gold jewellery from premises of former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav's family and RJD leaders on Friday, their newly found ally and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar appears to be caught on a classic case of Catch-22.

CM Nitish Kumar is face to face with a dilemma or difficult political circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting conditions. 

On one hand, his chair of CM rests on the support of the RJD whose leaders including ex-CM Lalu Yadav, his wife, daughter and son Tejaswi Yadav who is Deputy CM, are accused in the land for job scam.

And as such, Kumar can not open his mouth against any one of them who were accused of serious cases of corruption. In the past, Kumar had is on record saying that he had “ zero tolerance” against any issue of corruption.

Now, Nitish Kumar, who had recently deserted the BJP, quit the NDA as its constituent only to shake hands with these RJD leaders to become the CM again, despite earning the sobriquet of “ Paltu Ram”,and who is understood to carry a dream to stand as Prime Ministerial candidate against the popular Prime Minister Narendra Modi,can not even support his ally RJD leaders who were facing serious charges of corruption. 

Result? 

When journalists in Patna today asked him for his comment on CBI and ED’s search operations resulting in the recovery of Rs 53 lakh, USD 1,900, about 540 grams of gold and bullion and 1.5 kg of gold jewellery from premises of former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav's family and RJD leaders, CM Nitish Kumar gave a peculiar reply.

“…what can I say?”, Hindustan times.com headlined its story quoting CM Nitish Kumar.PTI report quotes him saying this.”…this happened in 2017. Then we ( Kumar’s JD(U) and the RJD) went our separate ways…five years later went by and, when we came to get her, raids occurred again.”

In any case, Tejaswai is likely to abide by the summons as his pregnant wife, Rajashree Yadav, is in hospital. Notably, while CM Nitish Kumar appears to have lost the anti-corruption trait of his personality, Deputy CM Tejaswi had been summoned on March 4, but did not appear then. A fresh date was given for today which also is likely to elicit his response in negative.