Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is looking for a fifth consecutive term in office, on Sunday asserted that he will "remain" in the National Democratic Alliance, crediting the Bharatiya Janata Party for his rise to power.
Kumar, the Janata Dal-United supremo, reiterated the stand while addressing the inaugural ceremony of Khelo India Youth Games, in which thousands of young athletes from across the country are participating.
The longest-serving CM, who has changed partners several times in the last decade, said, "I am going to remain here always. My party made me go here and there a couple of times earlier. But this is not going to happen again. Who made me (the CM)? It was late Atal Bihari Vajpayee."
Notably, Kumar has been a BJP ally since the mid-1990s, but he parted ways in 2013, following dissatisfaction with Narendra Modi, his then Gujarat counterpart, gaining national prominence.
Though his party got drubbed in the Lok Sabha polls a year later, and Modi became the prime minister, Kumar succeeded in holding his ground, thanks to a short-lived alliance with arch rival Lalu Prasad, the RJD president, whom he dumped in 2017 to return to the NDA.
The alliance continued till 2022, when Kumar joined hands with the Rashtriya Janata Dal-led Mahagathbandhan, vowing to defeat the BJP, accusing the former ally of having tried to split the JD-U.
However, ahead of the Lok Sabha polls last year, the septuagenarian returned to the NDA, abandoning the INDIA bloc he had helped form by bringing together parties that were opposed to the BJP.
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