Patna:
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's party Janata Dal United or the JDU is likely to end its 17-year-old alliance with the BJP today. The announcement of the split is likely to be made after a JDU meeting at 12:30 pm where a resolution is expected to be passed, say sources, who add that party chief Sharad Yadav will step down as convenor of the National Democratic Alliance or the NDA if the JDU decides to exit from the alliance.
Mr Kumar has also called a cabinet meeting at 11:30 am today. Sources say the party will be watching if BJP leaders will attend the meet. The BJP's Bihar ministers will meet at 10 am at Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi's residence to decide on their participation.
Both parties exchanged hefty parting shots yesterday.
Sushil Kumar Modi, BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar, spurned an invitation to meet with Mr Kumar in the morning. Later, BJP ministers in the Bihar government turned in their resignations to him.
The JDU 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 yesterday.
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 NDA. Pivoted by the BJP, the coalition has nine parties with the JDU as one of its senior members.