Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has resigned from his post as Bihar Chief Minister as the BJP-JDU alliance has once again fallen apart in the state. After days of speculations, Nitish Kumar resigned after meeting Governor Phagu Chouhan today afternoon.
Earlier in the day, 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.
As per sources, during the JDU meeting, all its MPs and MLAs supported Nitish Kumar’s decision to break the alliance and said that they will continue to support him in the future as well.
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.
Nitish Kumar is expected to partner with Rashtriya Janata Dal once again now, in a formula that is likely to see Nitish retain the CM’s chair while Tejaswi Yadav becomes deputy CM. Congress is also likely to be a part of this government, while communist parties have already extended their support to JDU-RJD alliance.
