Nitish Kumar latest news: Sixteen months after he ditched the National Democratic Alliance, severing ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party and formed a government of the Grand Alliance in alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Congress and the Left, the political corridors of Bihar are abuzz with intense speculation that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar could switch sides again and form a new government in the state.

The speculation gained momentum with hectic parleys by key stakeholders in the Bihar government — the RJD and the JD(U) — on Thursday evening. While RJD leaders, including its MLAs and senior leaders of the state, met at the residence of Lalu Prasad Yadav, Nitish held a separate meeting with his own MLAs. A separate meeting is scheduled to be held at Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s residence in Delhi with state BJP leaders, including former deputy CM Sushil Modi and party chief Samrat Choudhary.

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Sources told Financial Express Online that the BJP’s top brass including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and party president JP Nadda met on Wednesday for a three-hour-long meeting in Delhi. It is believed that PM Modi gave the green light to Nitish’s return to the NDA, subject to some conditions that were not immediately known.

Crisis hit the Bihar government soon after the central government announced the Bharat Ratna to socialist icon and former Bihar Chief Minister Karpoori Thakur. Hailing from the Extremely Backward Classes, Karpoori was the first to implement a layered quota system contrary to the one that the Mandal Commission later proposed. He is also credited with recognising and creating the EBC and Mahadalit vote bank that Nitish owes much of his success.

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Nitish Kumar’s praise for PM Modi for heeding his demand to confer India’s highest civilian honour on Karpoori Thakur and a veiled dig at the RJD and Congress through an attack on dynasty politics did not appear to have gone down well with the Lalu family. “Samajwadi purodha hone ka dawa karta wahi dawa hai, hawaon ki tarah badalti jinki vichardhara hai (One whose ideology changes with the direction of the wind claims to be the patron of socialism),” Lalu’s Singapore-based daughter Rohini Acharya said on X in a now-deleted post.

JD(U)’s national spokesperson KC Tyagi, who also arrived in Delhi on Thursday evening on the same flight as the BJP’s Bihar unit chief, said the remarks were unwarranted. “I do not comment on what children say. Nitish Kumar’s remarks (on dynasty politics) were not aimed at Sonia Gandhi or Lalu Yadav. They were in praise of Jan Nayak Karpoori Thakur who did not allow his son to enter politics. If somebody finds it (dyasty politics) right, it is their view,” he told reporters.

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Nitish and Lalu have shared a love-hate relationship for decades. Nitish has served as CM six times and has hopped alliances on five occasions so far. Lalu’s attempts to reconcile with Nitish over a phone call do not appear to have cut the ice. With the Mahagathbandhan government on the brink of collapse and all eyes fixed on Nitish Kumar’s next move yet again, the BJP also has a challenge to contend with.

In the 243-member Bihar Assembly, the RJD has 79 MLAs, the Congress has 19 while Left parties have 16 MLAs. The JD(U) has 45 MLAs while the NDA cumulatively commands 80 seats. In the event of Nitish switching sides, the Mahagathbandhan would need only 8 more MLAs to reach the majority figure of 122. The challenge for the JD(U) will be to keep its flock together in order to maintain its claim to power while the BJP will also be factoring in the risk involved in taking any such measure.