'Ekdum Karega': Bihar CM Nitish Kumar confirms Tejashwi will lead Mahagathbandhan in 2025

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday confirmed that his deputy Tejashwi Yadav will lead the grand alliance (Mahagathbandhan) in the next assembly election in 2025. "Hum to shuru se bol rahe hai, karibe karega...ekdum karega...samajh gaye na (I have been saying his since the start, he will do..you understand it right)," he said while responding to questions by reporters on whether Tejashwi will lead the grand alliance in 2025.

Nitish Kumar was earlier with the BJP but he dumped the alliance and formed the government with the RJD (Rashtriya Janata Dal) led by Tejashwi Yadav. This was the second time he allied with the RJD. While JDU claimed that the BJP was trying to break the party by propping up RCP Singh, the saffron party said Kumar broke the alliance because he had national ambitions.   

Later, reports suggested that there was an understanding that Kumar, who has been the chief minister for over 15 years, will leave the chair for Tejashwi in 2025, and in turn, the RJD will back him as the opposition's joint candidate for the top post in the country. This became clear in Kumar's subsequent remarks where he said he will try to unite the opposition to defeat the BJP in 2024.

Today again, he said a 'united opposition' can defeat the BJP government in 2024 but ruled himself out as a prime ministerial candidate for the next Lok Sabha polls.

Mahboob Alam, the legislature party leader of the CPI(ML) Liberation, said the chief minister pointed towards Tejashwi and said he is the leader of the future, under whose leadership the 2025 assembly election would be fought. CPI(ML) Liberation backs the state government from the outside.

Nitish Kumar's one of the key closest aides Vijay Kumar Chaudhary also confirmed the development and said the chief minister has been saying for quite a while that the future belongs to Tejashwi and youngsters like him. "He had said so yesterday in Nalanda where I, too, was present. He said it again today," Kumar said.

In the last assembly polls held in 2020, the JDU contested in alliance with the BJP. While BJP's number went up, JDU suffered the loss of 28 seats from the last election and could win just 43 - that made it the third largest party in the state. The JDU now blames the saffron party for the loss. 

The party believes that it was the BJP that encouraged Chirag Paswan, another former ally of the NDA, to field candidates against JDU. Chirag's decision to field candidates only against JDU and not against BJP created suspicion in the minds of many leaders. As a result of this, the JDU lost almost 20-plus seats. This also played the role in breaking up the alliance between BJP-JDU.