Patna: Every year from 2007 to 2022, Bhagalpur’s “mango man” Ashok Choudhary sent 2,500 cartons of the prized and extremely perishable jardalu mango to Delhi and Patna as part of what is known as Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s “mango diplomacy”.
Each carton, according to him, contained 20 mangoes, and went to several VVIPs — including the President of India, the Vice-President, the Prime Minister and Union ministers.
This year, however, this “mango diplomacy” has reportedly been halted without explanation.
“We were asked to hand over 2,500 packs to the local agriculture officers by 2 June. It was delayed by a day because the packaging that was coming from Kanpur was late. But as we were getting the cartons ready, the local agriculture officers told us that there will be no dispatch to either Patna or Delhi,” Choudhary, who grows mangoes over 1,000 acres and sells his produce across India, told ThePrint. “The mangoes rotted and I lost around Rs 15 lakh.”
The development comes just ahead of an Opposition meeting that Nitish — whose Janata Dal (United) formally broke ties with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in August 2022 — will host in Patna on 23 June. Seventeen Opposition parties, including ally Congress, will attend the meeting.
ThePrint reached Bihar Agriculture Minister Kumar Sarvjeet for a comment through phone calls and text messages. This report will be updated when a response is received.
Meanwhile, an official from the agriculture department said that, each year, the approval for dispatching mangoes came from the state cabinet secretariat. “So far, we haven’t received the approval, so we didn’t send the mangoes,” he told ThePrint.
On its part, the JD (U) said it was unaware of the development. “Only the state agriculture ministry will be able to comment on this,” party spokesperson Neeraj Kumar told ThePrint.
The BJP has attributed the halt to Nitish’s “bitterness” towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Not only mangoes but even the shahi lychee that used to be sent to dignitaries were not sent this year,” BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Modi told ThePrint. Sushil Modi has earlier served as Nitish’s deputy for 11 years — from November 2005 to June 2013 and then from July 2017 to November 2020.
“CM Nitish Kumar must have thought that there was no need to send the fruits to the PM and Union ministers since we are now political rivals. But once a tradition has been started it should have been continued. It relates to branding of Bihar’s products,” he said.
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‘Mango diplomacy’
Grown primarily in Bihar’s Bhagalpur area, jardalu got the coveted GI (Geographical Indication) tag in 2018. The Bihar government has been promoting the mangoes internationally — GI-certified jardalu mangoes were first exported to the UK in 2021.
Currently, 25,000 quintals of jardalu mangoes are exported to Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, besides the UK, sources in the state agriculture department told ThePrint.
Although unique in taste and flavour, the mangoes have one downside — they are highly perishable and available for a very short span of time every year, unlike its widely-exported peer, the Ratnagiri alphonso. “It hits the market on 25 May and after 10 June, it’s not available,” Choudhary said.
Of the 2,500 mango cartons sent as part of Nitish’s “mango diplomacy” until last year, 2,000 were sent to Delhi and the remaining to Patna.
Nitish’s ties with his on-again-off-again partner BJP have been on a downslide since August last year, when he dumped the party for the second time since 2013.
Since his breakup with the BJP last year, Nitish is yet to meet PM Narendra Modi, even skipping last month’s NITI Aayog governing council meeting that chief ministers and lieutenant governors representing 19 states and 6 Union territories attended.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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