In a blow to Nitish Kumar, the Janata Dal-United (JDU) unit of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu on Sunday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in the presence of BJP National President JP Nadda and the party's National General Secretary BL Santhosh.
The JD(U) leaders and elected members in local bodies joined the BJP in the presence of its president JP Nadda.
This is the third unit of Nitish Kumar's party whose leaders joined the BJP after the JD(U) parted ways with it and joined hands with the RJD to form the Mahagathbandhan 2.0 government in Bihar.
Earlier, JD(U) leaders from the Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh units joined the BJP.
BJP general secretary Tarun Chugh said 16 JD(U) leaders from the union territory joined his party on Sunday.
The JD(U) does not have much electoral presence outside Bihar. It had a few MLAs in Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh who switched over to the BJP.
The Bihar chief Nitish Kumar minister has been meeting opposition leaders to forge a united front against the BJP for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
While BJP is trying to gain ground in the southern part of the country, Nitish Kumar, in a tie-up with Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, can trounce the formidable BJP in adjoining Uttar Pradesh, the JD(U) asserted on Saturday.
JD(U) president Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan made the averment while also claiming that the party’s workers in UP want Kumar, the de facto leader, to contest the next Lok Sabha polls in the adjoining state.
"The most enthusiastic demand for our CM as Lok Sabha poll candidate has come from Phulpur. Similar demands have been made by workers in Ambedkar Nagar and Mirzapur. Elections are more than a year away, though, and we are therefore not thinking in terms of accepting or rejecting such demands," said the JD(U) chief.
He, however, dropped ample hints that the party would like to have a tie-up with the SP, founded by Mulayam Singh Yadav whom Kumar had met during his recent Delhi visit.
"Our leader's drive for opposition unity is making waves. Although he can choose to contest from any of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, the demands arising from UP are indicative of the buzz around his national initiative," said the JD(U) president.
"If Nitish and Akhilesh (ex-CM and Mulayam's son) come together, the BJP, which had won 65 Lok Sabha seats in UP in 2019, could be bundled out for less than 20," said Lalan.
The Bihar's longest-serving CM has been showing an inclination to play a role in national politics since his sudden parting of ways with the BJP a month ago.
Kumar has been ruling himself out of prime ministership though there is perceptible enthusiasm about the matter in the "Mahagathbandhan" that he has joined.
The seven-party coalition which also includes RJD, Congress and the Left appears formidably placed vis-a-vis the NDA which had made a clean sweep in last Lok Sabha polls, when the JD(U) and late Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP had fought as BJP allies.
(With inputs from PTI)
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