In a curious political development, the names of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and Union minister RCP Singh have gone missing from the list of 15 star campaigners of the JD-U, triggering various political speculations. Analysts say the move indicates the chief minister is not in a position to sour further relationship with the BJP which refused to seal the seat-sharing deal with the Bihar-centric party for the UP assembly polls.

For the past over a week, the local media had been widely carrying stories about the chief minister launching the party’s poll campaign in the UP against the BJP in general and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in particular. The logic behind it was that the BJP summarily rejected the JD-U’s request to enter into a seat-sharing deal with the latter. Moreover, the JD-U has continued talking big about how the Bihar scripted all-round development story under Nitish Kumar despite no “full-fledged support” from the Centre and denial of special category status to the state.

Much to everyone’s surprise, however, the name of the chief minister doesn’t figure among the list of the JD-U’s star campaigners as submitted to the Election Commission. So is the name of Union minister RCP Singh who is blamed by the top party leadership for not strongly putting the party case before the BJP and his failure to seal the seat-sharing deal although the talks had been going for the past over five months.

The list of star campaigners contains the names of only three known JD-U faces, such as Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh, party national president, KC Tyagi, general secretary and party’s parliamentary board chairman Upendra Kushwaha, a former Union minister. Even several unfamiliar faces like Rabindra Singh, RP Chaudhary, Sanjay Kumar, Sanjay Dhnagar, Bharat Patel and KK Tripathi figure in the list but not the chief minister or RCP.

“One reason why the name of Nitish Kumar has been kept out from the list is that the party is not in a position to open a direct front with the BJP with which support his government runs in Bihar,” explained a political expert. He added that Nitish had returned to the NDA little over just four years back and hence he doesn’t want to repeat the earlier mistake once again to jeopardize his political career.

What is strange, only last week the JD-U had finally released its first list of party candidates for 26 assembly seats it will be contesting in Uttar Pradesh assembly elections after its elongated wait for seat-sharing deal with the BJP went entirely ignored. The pain of the seat-sharing deal not getting materialized was clearly visible on the face of the party president Lalan Singh who formally announced to go it alone in UP polls. At the same time, he publicly criticized his party colleague and union minister RCP Singh for keeping the party in the dark over the seat sharing talks.

“We wanted to release the list soon after the BJP didn’t name the JD-U as its alliance partners for UP polls but we waited for a positive response following advice by party leader RCP Singh. However, we didn’t get any positive response from the BJP side,” was how Singh told the media in Delhi last week.

Curiously, the JD-U hoped for a seat-sharing deal with the BJP this time and had been pressing for it for the past several weeks but its request was totally ignored. Of late, both the partners have been engaged in serious political conflicts over various issues such as comparing Emperor Ashoka with Aurangzeb, Madarsas, population law, demand for caste-based census and special category status to Bihar. The BJP has just ignored every demand of the JD-U so far.