BJP meeting under way in Bihar as political uncertainty continues

Patna, January 27

Leaders of the BJP in Bihar gathered here on Saturday to discuss the political situation in the state, amid indications that former ally, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, was planning yet another volte face.

“We have come here to deliberate on the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. The current situation in Bihar will also be taken up for discussion,” state BJP president Samrat Choudhary told reporters ahead of the party meeting at its Veerchand Patel Marg office.

The meeting is also being attended by the party’s MPs. The BJP has the largest number of 17 MPs in Bihar, where the total number of Lok Sabha members is 40. The JD(U), headed by Kumar, has 16 while another NDA ally LJP, now split up between the uncle-nephew duo of Pashupati Kumar Paras and Chirag Paswan, has six.

Earlier, the party’s state in-charge Vinod Tawde had slammed the Congress for driving Kumar, the JD(U) president, towards a “break up” with the INDIA coalition of which he was widely regarded as the architect.

Party leaders have so far refrained from making categorical statements about extending support to Kumar, who is expected to resign as the chief minister before returning to the NDA.

An NDA ally since the 1990s, Kumar had quit the coalition in August 2022, suspecting the BJP of trying to engineer a split in the JD(U), and having conspired to bring down his party’s tally in the 2020 assembly polls.

Sniffing power, which the party got robbed off as a result of the development less than three years ago, a senior BJP leader said on condition of anonymity that at the meeting “a decision is also likely on distribution of portfolios”.

Till its ouster from power, the BJP held a lion’s share of Cabinet portfolios, by virtue of its superior numerical strength, and two of its leaders Tarkishor Prasad and Renu Devi, were deputy CMs.