Nitish will hand over CM post to Tejashwi in 2023: RJD

Nitish Kumar is expected to play a lead role in national politics ahead of 2024 parliamentary polls and preparations would start in 2023, said RJD’s state unit president Jagdanand Singh.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar will make way for his deputy Tejashwi Prasad Yadav to become the CM in 2023 as he himself steps up his efforts to unite opposition parties to challenge the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 parliamentary polls, Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD) state unit president Jagdanand Singh said on Thursday.

Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav. (ANI)

“Nitish Kumar is expected to play a lead role in national politics ahead of 2024 parliamentary polls and preparations would start in 2023. So it is natural that deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav would become CM when Kumar goes to Delhi for a larger role, as a prime ministerial candidate,” Singh told HT on phone from Delhi.

The term of the current government in Bihar ends in November 2025.

In 2020 state polls, CM Kumar’s Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and the BJP had fought as part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and formed the government.

However, in August this year, JD-U snapped ties with BJP and formed a new government in alliance with Lalu Prasad’s RJD and Congress, besides other parties.

Jagdanand Singh is a confidant of RJD chief Lalu Prasad, who himself had said in New Delhi on Wednesday that he would like to see his younger son Tejashwi Yadav as the chief minister, though he did not give any time frame.

On September 25, CM Kumar and Lalu Prasad had together met top Congress leader Sonia Gandhi in their bid to cobble up an anti-BJP alliance ahead of the 2024 general election in the country.

Days ago, senior RJD leader Shivanand Tiwary had “advised” CM Kumar to open an ashram in 2025 and make way for Tejashwi Yadav to become CM.

In the last few weeks, CM Kumar has himself dropped hints of a transition of power in Bihar, saying he was working for the younger generation to take control of state politics. A few days back, he made a faux pax when he referred to Tejashwi Yadav as the chief minister.

JD-U parliamentary board chairman Upendra Kushwaha, however, underplayed the RJD state president’s statement. “Jagdanand Singh’s statement is akin to a father making a desperate move to get his son or daughter married in a haste fearing there could be some mishap in the event,” he said.

Opposition BJP’s state spokesperson Nikhil Anand said, “We know Laluji is keen on making his son CM but the question is why would he bother for Nitish Kumar? It is the RJD chief who once had stopped Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav from becoming PM.”