Bihar: Nitish Kumar meets with JDU ministers, seniors amid tiff with BJP; big call likely

At a time when cracks in the NDA government are more evident than ever, Republic TV has learnt that the Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar called for a meeting on Friday. As per sources, in the aftermath of the meeting that had in attendance the JDU ministers and senior leaders including Sanjay Jha, Shravan Kumar, Lacey Singh, Madan Sahni, Lalan Singh, Maheshwar Hazari, Jayant Kumar, Ashok Chaudhary and Jama Khan, an 'important decision' could be taken by Kumar. 

In the past few days, BJP and JDU have been at loggerheads on a plethora of issues including caste-based census, NDA  leadership in Bihar, liquor ban, and the law and order situation. At this juncture, RJD's Tej Pratap Yadav, a few days back, had even extended an invitation to his 'Nitish Chacha'.

Seem to have been considering the invitation, the Bihar Chief Minister was spotted conversing with Tej Pratap, his brother Tejashwi at the Iftar party at 10, Circular road, Patna. Also, Tejashwi was spotted at JDU's Iftaar party a few days later, which got many tongues wagging about a possible JDU-BJP fallout and alliance between RJD-JDU. 

Fallout of RJD-JDU alliance in Bihar 

It is pertinent to mention here that the Nitish Kumar-led JDU and RJD under Lalu Yadav fought alongside Congress in the 2015 Bihar Assembly Elections. In the polls, JD-U managed to win only 69 seats while RJD won 80 seats. However, Lalu Prasad Yadav gave the chief ministerial position to Nitish Kumar, and made his younger son, Tejashwi Yadav, the deputy chief minister. His elder son, Tej Pratap, on the other hand, was made the health minister of the state.

However, after just a month in power, Nitish Kumar became a target of Lalu Prasad Yadav. "Nitish fell at my feet. Should I have thrown him out?" Lalu said, in one of the rallies after the election. Nitish Kumar is said to have conveyed his displeasure at the remarks made by Lalu Prasad Yadav through then JD(U) president Sharad Yadav and had even warned him against using such a language for him in public.

However, things did not change and in fact, Lalu's aides like Raghuvansh Prasad, and Mohammad Shahabuddin among other leaders started attacking Nitish. Unable to take the attacks, the JDU chief started diverging from the statements of his alliance partners and hailed the BJP on issues like demonetisation among others. Two months later, Nitish Kumar and Narendra Modi shared the dais in Patna at a function to mark the 350th birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh.

Thereafter, the JDU chief exited the Mahagathbandhan and joined NDA to form the government in Bihar. At that time, BJP had only 54 seats in the state Assembly.