At a recent party hosted by Bihar Assembly Speaker Vijay Kumar Choudhary, old friends Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sushil Kumar Modi were seen having a good time together.
Old-timers said the three leaders knew each other since their days in student politics and the J P Movement during the Emergency. In the early 1990s, Kumar played a major role in helping Prasad become chief minister of Bihar, but then fell out with him.
He then aligned with the BJP, and after defeating Prasad in the early 2000s, became chief minister himself. Modi had then served as his deputy, but after the BJP and the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) parted ways over the nomination of Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate of the National Democratic Alliance, Prasad and Kumar joined hands to defeat the BJP in the 2015 state Assembly polls.
"They were sharing jokes but that will not help run the Houses smoothly," said a JD-U leader. "The BJP will go all out against the government."
