A still of Nitish Kumar taken from the video that the BJP aired on Thursday
The BJP today prefaced a press conference by airing a video that shows Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar losing his temper at contractual workers protesting at a function he attended recently in his state.
The video shows Mr Kumar, who is making a bid for a third term as chief minister, attempting to calm the protesters, but eventually asking angrily if he should sign an order terminating their services.
"Nitish is displaying arrogance," said the BJP's Rajiv Pratap Rudy attributing the flare-up to Mr Kumar's new friendship with Lalu Yadav, who he has allied with to take on the BJP in Bihar, where elections will be held by November.
"The DNA of Lalu has left an imprint on Nitish," said Mr Rudy, using a term now entrenched in the lexicon of the Bihar elections.
After Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a comment about Nitish Kumar's "DNA" while questioning his political integrity at a rally, Mr Kumar has repeatedly accused the Prime Minister of "insulting the DNA of all Biharis." His friends and allies like Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Congress president Sonia Gandhi have joining the "DNA" chorus against PM Modi.
Nitish Kumar is the chief ministerial candidate of an alliance in Bihar that includes Lalu Yadav and the Congress; Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party announced his exit from the anti-BJP grouping today, unhappy at the number of seats his party was given to contest.
The BJP and its three allies in state are not projecting a presumptive Chief Minister and have decided that the PM - who has held four public meetings in Bihar, drawing huge audiences - will ask for votes directly for him.
This has pitched Mr Kumar and Mr Modi into a full-blown confrontation. The two leaders for years, and through a lengthy alliance of their parties, made no secret of their disregard for each other.
When the BJP decided in 2013 to pick Mr Modi as its candidate for PM, Mr Kumar ended their parties' 18-year-long alliance.