Nitish Kumar working to unite opposition, no desire to be PM: Tejashwi Yadav on Bihar politics

Patna: Amid murmurs about Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s ‘Prime Minister dream’, his deputy in the state Tejashwi Yadav said that the state's chief is only working to unite the opposition to present a strong front against BJP in 2024 and has no plans or aspirations to become the prime minister. Kumar, who broke off his alliance with the BJP in Bihar in August this year, had been making appearances with other opposition bigwigs like Sharad Pawar and KCR in an attempt to create a united front for the 2024 General Elections.

“Nitish Kumar is the Chief Minister, and we are working under his guidance. The only agenda he has right now is bringing all opposition together. He has no desire to become the PM,” ANI quoted Tejashwi Yadav as saying.

Ever since the BJP-JDU split, speculations that Nitish Kumar has bigger hopes to move to Delhi to become the prime minister have been making rounds. Though the Bihar leader has only denied prime ministerial ambitions, he never missed a chance to express his dislike toward the Narendra Modi-led BJP government.

On the other hand, the BJP had time and again accused Kumar of playing foul during the Bihar power play owing to his prime minister aspirations.

The power play in Bihar began when the Nitish Kumar-led JDU government scuttled its alliance with the BJP claiming that the party's top brass, referring to Amit Shah was trying to remove Kumar as CM, a claim the BJP has rejected.

In order to maintain the power in Bihar, Kumar, who took oath as CM for the 8th time last month, again joined hands with former ally RJD and made Tejashwi his deputy.

Before this Nitish Kumar split with BJP in 2014 and joined hands with RJD. However, he revived the partnership in 2017 ditching Lalu Yadav’s party.