A day after praising Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as the "guardian of the state", senior BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha on Sunday said there was no political angle to his meeting with the JD-U leader and that it was just a courtesy call.
Clarifying his statement, the veteran actor-turned-politician told TV news channels: "I have good personal relations with Nitishji. It was not the first time I was having tea with him... I don't want my family friendship be compared with political rivalry."
The meeting between Shatrughan Sinha and Nitish Kumar took place at the latter's residence the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi slammed the Bihar's JD-U government at BJP's Parivartan Rally in Muzaffarpur. And, his comment left the former ally of JD-U red-faced.
Sinha, however, insisted that he has been a part of the BJP when it had just two MPs. He said he has seen the party's good and bad times for decades and it was his first and probably the last political affiliation.
Justifying his praise of Kumar, Sinha said, "There is nothing wrong in praising somebody. I am Bihari Babu, I hail from Bihar, then will I praise the chief minister of Bihar or some other state?"
"I have this much of maturity and experience that I can never make any statement that will harm my party," Sinha added.
After visiting Kumar on Saturday, Sinha had reportedly said: "It was a courtesy call... I consider him as the guardian of the state."
Reasoning his absence from Modi's Parivartan Rally, Sinha had said that he was not invited so he did not go to Muzaffarpur, which is just 70 km from his constituency in Patna.
