Patna: Putting all speculations to rest, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday made a big announcement — ”alliance with the BJP is over.” The Bihar CM, who had sought time to meet Governor Phagu Chouhan in the evening, told the Janata Dal United MLAs and MPs that his party’s alliance with the BJP is over now.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar met with his party MLAs before coming to his decision on dumping the BJP for a second time.
During the crucial JDU meeting today, all MLAs and MPs of the party supported CM Nitish Kumar’s decision and said that they are with him. They said that they will always be with him, whatever he may decide, said reports.
The tension between the two parties has hit a breaking point over Nitish Kumar’s concerns that Union Minister Amit Shah is working relentlessly to split the Janata Dal (United). To this end, Nitish Kumar blamed RCP Singh, a former leader from his own party, for serving as Amit Shah’s proxy. RCP Singh quit the JDU on the weekend after his party accused him of deep corruption.
In 2017, RCP Singh joined the Union Cabinet as the representative of Nitish Kumar’s party. The Bihar Chief Minister was upset about being offered only one cabinet position. Yesterday, his closest aide said that RCP Singh had decided to join the centre of his own accord and had informed Nitish Kumar that Amit Shah had said he alone was acceptable as the JDU rep in the cabinet. “Will Amit Shah decide our party’s matters?” said Rajeev Ranjan Singh aka Lalan Singh, who is the president of the JDU.
The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which is Bihar’s single-largest party, also met today to discuss the Bihar crisis. The party is headed by Tejashwi Yadav. The party is expected to formally announce its support for Nitish Kumar, reviving an earlier alliance with him (the partnership lasted for less than three years). After that, 32-year-old Tejashwi Yadav is expected to accompany Nitish Kumar at a meeting with the Governor.
Till 2017, Tejashwi Yadav was a minister along with his brother in Nitish Kumar’s government which had three components: The JDU, Lalu Yadav’s party, and the Congress. Nitish Kumar had formed an alliance with them after calling off a decades-long relationship with the BJP. But he accused Tejashwi Yadav and his brother of corruption and used that controversy to end his alliance with ‘secular’ parties and returned to the BJP.
The Congress has also begun a series of meetings in Bihar to decide its stand on possible support to Nitish Kumar.
