Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s crossover to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance is “almost certain” with the swearing-in ceremony of the CM with BJP’s support “more or less finalised”, sources told Financial Express Online on the condition of anonymity.
The BJP and the JD(U) are learnt to have agreed “in-principle” to a formula where Nitish continues as CM for now, while two BJP leaders are sworn in as deputy chief ministers. One of them is likely to be Nitish’s former deputy Sushil Kumar Modi who will take oath as the deputy CM, the sources said, adding that the swearing-in ceremony is likely to be held in Patna on Sunday.
In the Bihar Assembly of 243 members, the RJD had 79 MLAs, BJP 78, JD(U) 45, Congress 19, CPI (M-L) 12, CPI and CPI-M with two seats, Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) has four seats, AIMIM one, and one seat is held by Independent.
Former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi, who leads the Hindustan Awam Morcha, on Friday claimed that the Mahagathbandhan government in Bihar will not remain intact.
Speaking to reporters, Manjhi claimed that Kumar’s statement on dynasty politics was aimed at his allies Congress and RJD. “The grand alliance government in Bihar would not remain intact at all after this statement of the CM,” he added.
After Kumar’s remarks, senior JD(U) leader KC Tyagi had clarified that Kumar’s remarks about dynasty politics were not aimed at ally RJD, headed by Lalu Prasad whose one son Tejashwi Yadav is his deputy and another, Tej Pratap Yadav, is a minister.
Speculations that all is not well in the Mahagathbandhan caught fire when Lalu Prasad’s daughter Rohini Acharya’s posted several ppsts on X, which are now deleted.
One of the posts said “those, who are ideologically adrift, claim to be the champions of socialism”, which was seen by many as an indirect attack to the CM. However, the RJD later claimed that the posts were aimed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and not Kumar.