Bihar's choppy political waters were on Tuesday astir over the prospects of a meeting between Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and K Chandrasekhar Rao, his Telangana counterpart, both of whom share a passion for building a united front against the Bharatiya Janata Party's hegemony.
Rao, popularly known as 'KCR', is scheduled to arrive in Patna on Wednesday morning and according to a statement issued by his office, he will be giving away cheques of ex-gratia to family members of a dozen labourers who were burnt alive in their sleep at Hyderabad where they lived in a cramped upper storey of a congested building.
KCR, who heads the Telangana Rashtra Samiti, is also tipped to play the nationalism card as he will be paying cheques of compensation to family members of soldiers who were killed in the stand-off with Chinese troops in Galwan Valley of Ladakh region.
Thereafter, the southern politician is expected to have a luncheon with Kumar, whose stock in the anti-BJP camp has sky-rocketed since his path-breaking exit from the National Democratic Alliance earlier this month.
"It will be a unity between the south and the north for defeating the BJP," said Neeraj Kumar, an MLC and chief spokesperson of Janata Dal-United, the party to which the Bihar chief minister belongs.
"KCR is undoubtedly a prominent leader of the south and a key voice against the BJP. In Nitish Kumar, the opposition is seeing new hope. The meeting between the two leaders is bound to have national repercussions," he said.
Rashtriya Janata Dal national vice president Shivanand Tiwary, whose party has seamlessly evolved from a staunch opponent to an ardent ally of the chief minister, concurred with the JD-U leader's views.
"The meeting between KCR and Nitish is definitely important. Both leaders have a very important role to play in forging opposition unity. The exit of Nitish from NDA has been the biggest setback to the BJP in recent times," he said.
The longest serving chief minister of Bihar, who is the de facto leader of the JD-U, has for long been fancied as a potential "secular" alternative to the charisma of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
While Tiwary, a veteran socialist who has been active in politics for five decades, said it was "premature to talk about who will be the face of the opposition in 2024", younger leaders in his own party thought otherwise.
"The 2024 Lok Sabha polls will be a contest between Nitish Kumar and Narendra Modi. All parties in the opposition will agree on the name of Nitish Kumar," said RJD spokesperson Shakti Singh Yadav.
Another RJD spokesperson Mrityunjay Tiwari said, "There is little doubt that Nitish Kumar will be hoisting the tricolour at the Red Fort when the country would be celebrating its Independence Day in 2024."
The exuberance shown by the younger lot in RJD is caused in no small measure by their hopes that once Kumar is out to play a new innings in national politics, it will be the turn of their leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, currently serving his second term as the deputy CM, to rule the state.
Meanwhile, the BJP, which is licking its wounds since the debacle in Bihar and is trying to make itself count in Telangana politics in a big way, reacted with predictable queasiness.
"The meeting between KCR and Nitish Kumar will be a new comedy show staged in the name of opposition unity," said senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi in a statement.
Modi also sought to draw a parallel between the Telangana CM and Lalu Prasad, the founding president of RJD, alleging that both shared a propensity for corruption and dynasty rule.
"Lalu Prasad could not help his own daughter Misa Bharti win the Lok Sabha polls in 2019. Ditto for KCR and his daughter Kavitha," added Modi, who is trying to make the most out of the current crisis in Bihar and pull himself out of political hibernation.
