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Will he actually?
That's the point
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and former union minister Lalu Prasad had once described Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar as "paltu ram (turncoat)" of politics.
Prasad suggested that Kumar has been inconsistent in politics and known for his U-turns.
Having been together during the JP movement, Prasad and Kumar fell out in 1994 and were arch-rivals till 2015 when they once again teamed up for the Bihar assembly elections.
However, this friendship was shortlived as Kumar dumped Prasad within two years in 2017 to once again join hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He had quit the NDA in 2013 after the BJP named Narendra Modi as its Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Kumar is yet again restless with the BJP and on the verge of calling it quits.
Perhaps he is vary of the rise of the BJP in Bihar and apprehends that there might be a split in the Janata Dal (United) akin to the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.
Kumar is of the view that the BJP is prompting his one-time close confidante RCP Singh to go against him like it propped up Eknath Shinde to replace Uddhav Thackeray as the Maharashtra chief minister.
Unlike Thackeray, Kumar acted fast and prevented an immediate takeover by Singh. But the question is how long.
To counter the BJP, Kumar has dialled Congress president Sonia Gandhi to discuss the possibility of a realignment. The Congress won't have any problem as long as someone is ready to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
However, it remains to be seen if the RJD would be willing to accept Kumar as the chief minister and agree to play a second fiddle given that the JD(U) is much-weakened now as compared to 2015.
No doubt, the BJP has pushed him to the wall and the relations could have reached a point of no return but the bigger question is whether Kumar will do another volte face of his political career.
If Kumar does so, he will prove Prasad right and if he doesn't the BJP leadership will force him to surrender and play the role of a junior partner.