Patna, Apr 24 (PTI) Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday pinned the blame for his last exit from the BJP-led NDA on close aide Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan, who now holds a cabinet berth in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Kumar, who realigned with the BJP barely a couple of months before last year’s Lok Sabha polls, said this in presence of the PM, with whom Lalan and he were sharing the stage at a function in Madhubani district.

The septuagenarian leader lamented his lapse in judgment nearly three years back when he quit the NDA, accusing the BJP of trying to split the JD(U).

“We had been together since the beginning,” said Kumar, recalling his ties with the BJP dating back to the 1990s, which he first snapped in 2013 because of disagreement over the elevation of Modi, who was then the chief minister of Gujarat.

Referring to his second break up with the BJP in August 2022, Kumar turned towards Lalan and remarked: “It was my party colleague sitting here who caused me to go astray”.

Notably, Lalan was then the national president of the JD(U) and he gave up the post just a month before Kumar made an abrupt exit from the INDIA bloc which the two had helped form.

Speculations had been rife that Lalan was made to step down because of the perception that he had grown too close to the RJD, headed by Kumar’s arch rival Lalu Prasad.

Chiding the Union minister, the Bihar CM said, “We had fought them (RJD) together. He (Lalan) knows it well. He has been in the party for long, been its president. He, too, finally realised that they were up to some mischief.” Incidentally, Lalan became the JD(U)’s national president in 2021, succeeding bureaucrat-turned-politician RCP Singh who was accused of accepting a berth in the Union cabinet without the consent of Kumar, the party’s supreme leader.

The upheaval of 2022 had also seen unceremonious exit from the party of Singh who was accused of being in cahoots with the BJP. The former IAS officer subsequently joined the saffron party but, following the return of Kumar to the NDA, floated his own outfit. PTI NAC NN