A day of great political upheaval in Bihar ends with Nitish Kumar once again staking claim to form the government. After resigning from the post of Chief Minister earlier in the day and breaking the Janata Dal (United) alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, Nitish is set to return as the Bihar CM.
Returning to his Mahagathbandhan alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Nitish Kumar has staked claim to form the government in front of Governor Phagu Chauhan. Congress and the communist parties are also going to support this alliance in government.
Nitish Kumar has said that they have the support of seven Mahagathbandhan parties, totaling 164 MLAs in the Bihar assembly.
RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav is likely to be the deputy CM in this new government. It is notable that JDU-RJD alliance had formed the government in the state after the 2015 elections as well but that government couldn’t even complete 2 years as Nitish returned to BJP.
Nitish Kumar resigns and breaks alliance with the BJP in Bihar
Earlier in the day, Nitish Kumar resigned from his post as Bihar Chief Minister as the BJP-JDU alliance once again broke in the state. After days of speculations, Nitish Kumar resigned after meeting Governor Phagu Chouhan in the afternoon.
Nitish Kumar made the announcement of breaking the alliance with the BJP in front of JDU MLAs and MPs who had gathered in Patna for a meeting on this issue.
This is not the first time that JDU has broken its alliance with the BJP. The party walked out of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 2013 in protest against the announcement of Narendra Modi as the PM candidate. However, after a brief affair with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Nitish Kumar re-entered an alliance with BJP in 2017.
The relationship between BJP and JDU has been strained since the last Bihar elections, but the tensions had been rising in recent days and the breaking point may have been former union minister RCP Singh’s resignation from JDU last weekend, calling it a sinking ship. JDU had called it BJP’s attempt to split the party through RCP Singh.
