Nitish Kumar has been elected as the chief minister at the legislator meeting of the National Democratic Alliance(NDA) which met today to elect the leader for Bihar, after they won the majority in the states’s assembly elections.
He is set to serve as the chief minster for the fourth straight term as NDA won 125 seats in the 243-member state Assembly.
Nitish Kumar, the chief minister candidate for the NDA told reporters on Friday, “Things will be discussed in detail and all decisions will be taken at that time.”
The Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) has always maintained that Nitish Kumar would retain the post, but the dismal performance of the Janata Dal United (JDU) has put a question on it.
The JDU which is the alliance partner of the NDA in Bihar, has just won only 43 seats in the recently concluded Bihar elections and the BJP managed to win 74 seats in the state. The JDU in 2015 assemble polls had won 71 seats and has come down by twenty eight seats.
After the elections, Nitish Kumar had said the NDA will decide who will be the next chief minister which is being seen as a as a sign of nervousness over the future of the JDU leader.
The NDA has repeatedly assured that Nitish Kumar will be the next chief minister of Bihar, even when another alliance partner Lok Janshakti Party(LJP) leader Chirag Paswan rebelled against Kumar’s leadership and decide to contest the elections solo.
The question now arises about whether LJP leader Paswan, who in his election campaign attacked Nitish Kumar and had spoken about ‘Nitish-Mukt Bihar’ would continue to remain part of the NDA in Bihar.
The BJP however had said that anyone not accepting Nitish Kumar’s leadership would not be considered part of the NDA.
Opposition leader, Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal which emerged as the single largest party with 75 seats took dig at JDU’s Nitish Kumar and said the voters made it clear that they wanted change.
He said, “See where Nitish Kumar’s glow has gone. He has been pushed to the third position. This is a mandate for change.”