Nitish stakes claim to form government

Hours after resigning as Chief Minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar late on Wednesday met Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi with NDA leaders and staked claim to form a new government with the support of the BJP.

Meanwhile, RJD has sought time to meet Governor to stake claim to form government saying that they were the largest single party and had support of some JD-U MLAs also.

Sources said that Governor has asked the RJD leaders to meet him at 11 a.m. on Thursday.

"Sought time to meet Governor. Being the single largest party in the assembly will claim to form government. We have also support of some JD-U MLAs who won elections against BJP," Tejashwi Yadav tweeted.

After holding a meeting of NDA and JD-U legislators at his official residence, Nitish Kumar and senior BJP leaders, including former Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi went to meet the Governor to stake claim to form the government.

Before leaving for Raj Bhavan, senior BJP leader, Nand Kishore Yadav said, "We are going to meet the Governor to stake claim to form government."

Ending a 20-month-long coalition of the Grand Alliance that defeated the BJP in 2015, Nitish Kumar met the Governor in the evening and handed his resignation claiming he can't work in the "current circumstances" following corruption charges against Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav -- son of RJD chief Lalu Prasad.

In the 243-member assembly, the RJD has 80 MLAs, the JD-U 71 and Congress 27. The BJP has 53 MLAs and its allies LJP 2, RLSP 2 and HAM 1. There are four independents and four MLAs belong to the CPI-ML.

The JD-U and BJP together make up for 124 seats and with BJP allies the total could go up to 129, clearly crossing the half-way mark.

--IANS

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