Nitish Kumar was sworn in as Chief Minister of Bihar with Tejashwi Yadav as deputy.
Amit Shah called Nitish Kumar a day before the Bihar Chief Minister dumped the BJP and was assured that he had "nothing to worry about", senior BJP leader Sushil Modi told NDTV, in the first admission by the party that it tried to save the alliance.
Here are the 10 latest developments in this story:
"Two days back, Amit Shah called Nitish Kumar. Nitish said there's nothing to worry about. PM [Narendra] Modi also spoke to Nitish many times in the last 1.5 years, but he never complained," Sushil Kumar Modi, who was once Nitish Kumar's deputy and considered one of the few BJP leaders close to him, said. Party sources had earlier denied that there had been any such overture.
Another BJP leader, Union Power Minister RK Singh, told NDTV, "Many of us in the BJP felt Nitish was a burden in 2020 and the BJP should have contested alone. But leadership decided otherwise."
The statements underlined BJP's decision to make a clean cut out of the relationship and focus on all 243 constituencies of the state by itself.
In his first avowal after taking oath as Bihar Chief Minister an eighth time, thus continuing in the chair with a change of partners, Nitish Kumar had taken a shot at PM Modi over the next Lok Sabha elections: "He won in 2014, but will he in 2024?"
Asked if he wants to be a PM candidate even as he extolled opposition unity, he told reporters that he is "not a contender for anything". "The question to ask is if the person who came in 2014 will win in 2024," he said. Elections in Bihar are due now only in 2025, a year after the Lok Sabha contest.
It was the BJP's stance as the big brother in the state that had constantly riled Nitish Kumar since the state elections. What apparently pushed him over the edge was his conviction that the BJP was about to a do a Maharashtra in Bihar, sources said.
There was concern that the BJP would split his Janata Dal United and install a Chief Minister they can control, the way they dismantled the Uddhav Thackeray government in Maharashtra, sources had said.
That man, Mr Kumar had suspected, was RCP Singh, who claimed to be the chosen one of the BJP for the lone cabinet seat it allotted the JD(U) at the Centre. Mr Singh was not offered another term at the Rajya Sabha, forcing him to step down from the Union cabinet. Over the weekend, Mr Singh quit the JD(U) after the party accused him of corruption.
In a no-frills ceremony at the Raj Bhavan, a day after snapping ties with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and joining hands with the Rashtriya Janata Dal to form a 'Mahagathbandhan' government, Mr Kumar was sworn in along with RJD's Tejashwi Yadav who is set to be his deputy.
Other cabinet ministers will be sworn in later once the three main alliance partners - which also includes the Congress and other smaller parties - decide on the number of berths and the legislators who will be made ministers.
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