Nitish Kumar to meet Bihar Governor, likely to split with BJP

Amid hectic political moves in Bihar where the ruling NDA government appears to be on the brink of disintegration Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is likely to meet Governor Phagu Chauhan later in the day sources close to the development saidKumar who has been promised the support of opposition parties sought time from Chauhan who has given an appointment at 4 pm they saidA meeting of the RJDled Grand Alliance comprising the Left and the Congress also took place at Rabri Devis house across the street from the chief ministers residence where all the MLAs are said to have signed a letter of support to KumarLeader of the opposition Tejashwi Yadav is likely to visit the CMs residence to hand over the letter of support any timeThe CM is understood to have told party legislators and MPs at a meeting he convened at his official residence that he had been driven against the wall by theBJP which tried to weaken his JDU first by propping up Chirag Paswans rebellion and later through the partys former national president RCP SinghSingh was made a cabinet minister at the Centre without Kumars explicit agreement Consequently when his term as a Rajya Sabha member ended the JDU refused to give him another term as an MP thus ending his stint as cabinet minister as wellFollowing this rumours of a split in the JDU engineered by Singhs supporters surfacedRelations between the BJP and the JDU have been worsening for quite some time in the wake of disagreements over a host of issues including caste census population control and the Agnipath defence recruitment schemeCPIML Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya had told PTI on Monday the crux of the row between JDU and BJP also stemmed from the recent statement by J P Nadda president of the saffron party who said regional parties have no futureThe BJP meanwhile has gone into a huddle at the residence of Deputy CM Tarkishore Prasad where all ministers belonging to the party besides state president Sanjay Jaiswal and other senior leaders are also presentBJP sources said they will wait till Nitish Kumar makes the first moveIn the state assembly which has an effective strength of 242 requiring 121 MLAs for a majority the RJD has the highest number of 79 MLAs followed by the BJP 77 and the JDU with 44The JDU also enjoys the support of four MLAs of former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhis Hindustani Awam Morcha and an IndependentThe Congress has 19 MLAs while the CPIMLL has 12 and CPI and CPIM have two eachBesides one MLA belongs to Asaduddin Owaisis AIMIMThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever