# India

Nitish Kumar dares NDA leaders to break JD-U

The Bihar chief minister said this while reacting to NDA leaders’ claim that the JD-U was heading for a split into two.

Nikhil Vyas | New Delhi | October 2, 2023 6:45 pm

Nitish Kumar dares NDA leaders to break JD-U

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar strongly dismissed the claims made by some NDA leaders that JD-U will ‘break’, saying “These are unnecessary statements which have no meaning”.

“If BJP has guts, let it break the JD-U,” the chief minister said while interacting with media persons in Patna on Monday.

Building Construction Minister Ashok Choudhary had a spat with JD-U national president Lalan Singh recently to the glee of NDA leaders. However, the minister made up with the party president and called him an ‘elder brother’. But still clinging on to their differences, the NDA leaders started speculating about the rift in the party.

Earlier, RLJD’s Upendra Kushwaha, Bihar BJP chief Samrat Chaudhary, Jitan Ram Manjhi, and other leaders had even claimed that the JD-U was heading for a split into two, while one splinter group would merge with the BJP, the other with the RJD.

Following the statement of Nitish Kumar, former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad claimed that the BJP did not need to break the JD-U. Let Nitish Kumar make Tejashwi Yadav chief minister of the state and see what happens next.

“During the formation of Mahagathbandhan, there was a buzz about a deal between Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar that the latter could make Tejashwi Yadav CM of Bihar and the former would switch to Central politics with the backup of the entire Mahagathbandhan,” Prasad said.

The senior BJP leader further said that Nitish Kumar no longer has the clout in the so-called Mahagathbandhan he once used to. This, he pointed out, reflects that he could neither become a convener nor a prime ministerial candidate of Opposition parties.

“All his (Nitish’s) efforts to gain a foothold in the alliance failed. This doesn’t augur well for Bihar. Let him make Tejashwi Yadav CM of Bihar and see the fate of the JD-U,” Prasad added.