Nitish Kumar took oath as the Chief Minister of Bihar at 2 pm today, quitting the BJP on Tuesday and announced a new “Mahagathbandhan“, which also includes Tejashwi Yadav and other opposition parties.
Here are the 10 latest developments in this big and interesting story:-
1: Nitish Kumar took oath as Chief Minister for the eighth time today and Tejashwi Yadav took oath as Deputy Chief Minister. No other MLA was sworn in as minister today.
2: The BJP held a massive protest in Patna today, accusing Nitish Kumar of betraying the mandate of Bihar. Announcing plans to hold protests in the districts as well, state BJP chief Dr Sanjay Jaiswal said that all the people of Bihar will never forgive Nitish Kumar.
3: Tarkishore Prasad, who was deputy chief minister in the BJP-Janata Dal (United) government, told the media that he had tried his best to keep the alliance going. He said that Union Home Minister Amit Shah has spoken to Nitish Kumar in this regard.
4; Nitish Kumar had yesterday said that the new ruling alliance would be a “mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) of seven parties”. He said the decision to walk away from the BJP – for the second time in nine years – was based on the response he received in his talks with MLAs of his party this morning.
5: Tejashwi Yadav will take the responsibility as Deputy Chief Minister and will take oath along with Nitish Kumar. “The BJP betrays all its allies and threatens others,” he said at a news briefing along with Nitish Kumar.
6: Switching partners in the medium term is an established trait of Nitish, and it has drawn heavy criticism for his ideological flexibility and willingness to trade principles for power. Until 2013, Nitish Kumar had partnered with the BJP, although it was a fractured collaboration after it became clear that Narendra Modi would emerge as the main leader of the BJP. He broke ties with the BJP and formed the government with Lalu Yadav and Congress in 2015. Bihar’s veteran leader and former Chief Minister Lalu Yadav is the father of Tejashwi Yadav. In 2017, Nitish walked out of the three-party alliance, claiming that Tejashwi Yadav’s insatiable corruption as a minister could not be tolerated by him.
7: Since his re-engagement with the BJP, the parties have exchanged public criticism several times on issues big and small. As recently as June, Nitish Kumar contradicted the prime minister by saying that the Center had refused to conduct a caste census, while Bihar would actually count castes. Tejashwi Yadav openly supported him on this step.
8; Nitish Kumar’s anger towards the BJP has crossed the danger mark over reports of Union Home Minister Amit Shah rigging the JD(U) for defectors. Nitish realized that a leader of his party, RCP Singh, who had joined the Union Cabinet, was being used to turn JDU against him. That’s why he refused to extend RCP Singh’s tenure in the Rajya Sabha, which meant that he would have to resign from Modi’s cabinet later. Over the weekend, Nitish Kumar’s aides publicly accused RCP Singh of corruption; In protest, he resigned from JDU.
9: Nitish Kumar felt that RCP Singh was part of a second conspiracy by the BJP to undermine his position, the first being that regional leader Chirag Paswan was hired by the BJP to act as a vote-cutter for Nitish Kumar in the last assembly election. had tacit support. Chirag Paswan fielded his party’s candidate against JDU; Only BJP benefited. When Nitish Kumar roared against Chirag Paswan, the BJP refused to criticize him.
10: Nitish Kumar felt that Amit Shah was trying to replicate the Maharashtra ‘Ek Nath Shinde’ model in Bihar and ended the BJP alliance to pre-empt it. Uddhav Thackeray was forced to step down as chief minister after the same senior leader of his party, Shiv Sena, Eknath Shinde, in partnership with the BJP, instigated a massive rebellion. Eknath Shinde was nominated as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra by BJP and Devendra Fadnavis was made Deputy Chief Minister.
