Patna:
Hours after Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar declared "it's time to make a decision," his party and the BJP exchanged hefty parting shots today, reporting the end of their 17-year-old alliance.
Sushil Kumar Modi, BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar, spurned an invitation to meet with Mr Kumar this morning. Later, BJP ministers in the Bihar government turned in their resignations to him.
The chief minister has called a cabinet meeting at 11:30 am tomorrow. Sources say the party will be watching if BJP leaders will attend the meet.
The JDU will then meet at 12:30 pm where a resolution is expected to be passed, say sources, adding party chief Sharad Yadav will step down as NDA convenor if the JDU breaks up with the NDA.
Earlier in the evening, Mr Yadav met Mr Kumar at his residence in Patna.
The JDU, which is expected to announce the split tomorrow, has not been reticent about its motive for the break-up. "The inevitability of
Narendra Modi's ascent in the BJP is something we can't reconcile to," the party's Shivanand Tiwari told NDTV today.
The BJP recently chose Narendra Modi, the Gujarat Chief Minister, to head its campaign for the national election, due by May. The JDU says that proves the BJP is determined to make Mr Modi its prime ministerial candidate, which it has decreed unacceptable.
(Read)Sources say that at a recent function at Oxford, BJP leader Arun Jaitley and JDU parliamentarian NK Singh "talked of happy divorce."
Unlikely. The BJP in Bihar says that the state voted for the alliance, not the JDU alone,
and Mr Kumar is, therefore, obliged to resign as chief minister and face an election.
(Read)To prove his majority in the state assembly, Mr Kumar needs 122 votes. The JDU has 118 state legislators.
Mr Kumar's JDU alleges that Mr Modi did not do enough to stop hundreds of Muslims from being killed in Gujarat's communal riots of 2002, and must therefore be ruled out as the prime ministerial candidate of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Pivoted by the BJP, the coalition has nine parties with the JDU as one of its senior members.