Those who refused to make Nitish Kumar the national convenor of the INDIA bloc are making offers to appoint him as the prime minister of India, claimed JD(U) leader KC Tyagi on Friday, adding that the party had rejected the inducement.
With 12 Lok Sabha seats, Nitish Kumar has emerged as one of the two kingmakers in national politics. He is indispensable if the Bharatiya Janata Party, which managed to win 240 seats, wants to form a government at the Centre.
The remark comes amid reports that the INDIA bloc had sent overtures to Kumar and N Chandrababu Naidu, whose TDP won 16 Lok Sabha seats. Both the leaders have given written support to Narendra Modi, the prime minister-designate; however, they are said to be bargaining hard for their sets of demands, including cabinet berths.
Tyagi, one of the senior most politicians in Nitish Kumar's JDU, told The Indian Express that the party had rejected the offer and was firmly with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
"Such is the game of politics that those who had refused to make Nitish Kumar INDIA bloc’s national convenor have been now making offers to make Nitish PM," he told the newspaper.
{{/usCountry}}"Such is the game of politics that those who had refused to make Nitish Kumar INDIA bloc’s national convenor have been now making offers to make Nitish PM," he told the newspaper.
{{/usCountry}}He claimed that Nitish Kumar had quit the INDIA bloc because of the "ill-treatment" by the Congress and other parties.
He said his party wouldn't go back to the INDIA bloc -- a promise Nitish Kumar made on several occasions in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls.
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He said the BJP was giving a lot of respect to the JDU.
Nitish Kumar had switched back to the BJP-led alliance in January, days after Mamata Banerjee proposed the name of Mallikarjun Kharge as the potential PM candidate for the alliance.
Kumar's party had accused the Congress of attempting to usurp the leadership position of the alliance.
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Nitish Kumar had been instrumental in stitching up the Opposition's alliance.
The BJP-led NDA, including Nitish Kumar and N Chandrababu Naidu's parties, have won 293 seats in the recently concluded general elections. The INDIA bloc won 234 seats.