After weeks of campaigning and hours of marathon voting, the Nitish Kumar- led NDA has officially retained power in Bihar on Wednesday overtaking the grand alliance by a slender margin.
The alliance won all the 125 seats it was leading in, with BJP winning 74 seats, and JD(U) securing win in 43 seats. The Tejashwi Yadav-lead RJD was the single largest party with 75 seats.
Though reduced to only 43 seats, the BJP has announced that the CM post will belong to JDU itself. However, Congress has invited Nitish Kumar to leave the NDA alliance and join the grand alliance. Digvijaya Singh, a senior Congress leader and former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh took to Twitter and urged the JDU to step down.
"The BJP and the Sangh Parivar are like an amber bel tree. A tree that grows by thriving on other trees and thus drying them up. Nitish Ji, Lalu Ji fought with you and went to jail. Leave BJP/Sangh Parivar ideology and bless Tejaswi," Digvijaya Singh tweeted.
'The BJP has reduced Nitish's status through diplomacy, ending the legacy of Ram Vilas Paswan. The BJP has weakened the socialist secular ideological politics in all the coalition governments to date and improved their position,"Singh said
He recalled in another tweet that the BJP had hijacked the JDU in the elections.
'Rahul Gandhi is the only leader in the country today in the ideological struggle. NDA allies need to understand that politics is ideology. "Anyone who abandons ideology and compromises for selfishness will not stay in politics for long," he wrote on Twitter.
In 2015, the JDU, which contested as part of the grand alliance and won 71 seats, jumped on the bandwagon and joined the BJP. It has been widely alleged that the LJP's Chirag Paswan alliance with Nitish Kumar to expand their base in Bihar was the BJP's own plan to hoodwink others. Some JDU leaders shared the concern that the BJP has stabbed them in the back. Nitish also fears that the BJP may drop out of the party as it has gained the big-brother status in the alliance. Nitish, who has no hesitation in switching parties for power needs to know what he will do in such a situation.