Veteran Bihar chief minister to step down for move to parliament
AFP via Getty ImagesNitish Kumar, the chief minister of India's eastern state of Bihar, has said he will step down from his post to become a member of the federal parliament.
Kumar, 75, said in a post on X on Thursday that the new government in the state "will have his full cooperation and guidance".
His decision paves the way for a new chief minister, who can be from Kumar's Janata Dal (United) party or his coalition partner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
This decision marks a pause for Kumar's political career in the state where he was chief minister for most parts of the last two decades.
He is one of Bihar's most influential political figures. Several of his party colleagues and alliance partners say his move to vacate the top post has been on the cards for a while because of his deteriorating health.
Kumar said his voters' "trust and support" had enabled his government to serve the state "with complete dedication".
Kumar may take some time to resign, one of his party colleagues said, considering that the term of the outgoing members of Rajya Sabha (upper house of Indian parliament) ends in April.
In November, he took oath as Bihar's chief minister for a record 10th time, after the JDU and its allies, including the BJP, won 202 out of 243 seats in the assembly polls.
Five Rajya Sabha seats are now falling vacant in Bihar. Kumar's party and its allies have sufficient numbers of representatives in the assembly and the parliament to comfortably elect leaders in four of the five seats, a senior BJP leader told the BBC.
Existing parliamentarians and state legislators cast their votes to elect new Rajya Sabha members.
Analysts say that Kumar's decision to move to parliament will allow Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP to stake claim for the top job in the state. If that happens, the BJP will get its first ever chief minister in Bihar.
With more than 74 million voters, Bihar is India's poorest state, with millions migrating to other parts of India for jobs. It is also among the few states in India where BJP has not managed to form a government yet on its own.
At this point, there is no clarity on who will take charge as Bihar's new chief minister when Kumar resigns.
"The new chief minister of Bihar will be from the BJP and the party's parliamentary board will soon decide the candidate," BJP's national spokesperson RP Singh told the BBC.
However, there's a section of Janata Dal (United) leaders who have protested against their party chief's move to step down as chief minister.
"We went door-to-door seeking votes for Nitish Kumar. If he is no longer the chief minister, where will the people of Bihar go?" Kumar's party colleague Rajeev Ranjan Patel told news agency ANI.
