Bihar on menu, but politics on the plate?

A day after he chose to skip Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s luncheon meeting with Opposition leaders, pleading prior engagements, Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar arrived in the national capital and had a one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He also attended the lunch hosted by the Prime Minister in honour of the visiting Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth.

While Kumar and his party asserted that too much shouldn’t be read into his skipping Sonia’s lunch and attending the Prime Minister’s, the action did lead to speculation, with many wondering if the Bihar strongman, who is constantly under pressure from his government’s main alliance partner Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), could be plotting a return to the NDA fold, of which his party was once a part of.

Kumar’s decision not to attend Sonia’s lunch had sparked off talks of a big political re-alignment being in the offing.

Talking to reporters after his meeting, Kumar dismissed all talk of a political realignment, telling the media, “I did not meet him in the capacity of the JD(U) chief but as the state chief minister. It was not a political meeting. Why is the media reading too much into …read more