New Delhi: The alliance between the Bharatiya Janata Party and Janata Dal (United) in Bihar is developing cracks following Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's decision to return the Kosi flood relief money donated by his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi.
Sources have told CNN-IBN that Nitish Kumar is planning to go alone in the Bihar Assembly elections scheduled to be held later in the year. The Bihar unit of the BJP has also told the party leadership in Delhi that Nitish will contest Bihar elections alone.
The report from the Bihar unit has put the BJP high command under pressure to take a call on the alliance with Nitish soon. BJP's top decision making body, the Parliamentary Board, will meet in a few days to discuss the issue and take a final call on the alliance.
The decision to call the BJP Parliamentary Board was taken after a series of meeting that Bihar BJP leaders had with LK Advani and President Nitin Gadkari.
Meanwhile, after exchanging barbs Nitish Kumar on Monday shared dais with his deputy and BJP leader Sushil Modi at an official function in Patna.
Nitish Kumar, however, refused to comment on the simmering tension with the BJP.
The tension between Nitish Kumar and Narendra Modi came to the fore during the BJP National Executive meeting in Patna when some Bihar dailies carried advertisements claiming the conditions of Muslims in Gujarat was much better than those living in other parts of the country. Another advertisement claimed that Gujarat government had donated Rs 5 crore to Bihar for Kosi flood relief in 2008 while a third one carried a picture Nitish and Modi holding hands at a BJP-led National Democratic Alliance rally during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
The Kosi flood relief advertisement infuriated Nitish so much that he not only cancelled a dinner in honour of BJP leaders in Patna but also called the claims made by Gujarat government of Narendra Modi as "being against Indian culture" and announced that the money would be returned.
Moreover, one of the pictures in an advertisement that showed young Muslim girls studying was found out to be of students of Shibli National College, Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh.
Nitish has been trying to keep Modi out of Bihar due to the large Muslim votebank that he is desperately trying to cultivate. Modi was not allowed to campaign in the state during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
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