Rebel Cong, RJD leaders join BJP in poll-bound Bihar

Patna, Oct 13 (PTI) The BJP in Bihar on Monday inducted two rebel leaders of the INDIA bloc who had won the last assembly polls on tickets of RJD and Congress, but had been sitting with members of the NDA inside the assembly after JD(U) of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar joined it in 2024.

State BJP president Dilip Jaiswal welcomed into the party Sangita Kumari, who last week resigned from her Mohania seat she had won as an RJD nominee, besides Siddharth Saurav, a two-term Congress MLA from Bikram.

“I had recently said that nearly half a dozen MLAs of the INDIA bloc are going to jump ship. Today is the first instalment,” Jaiswal told reporters on the occasion.

Altogether six MLAs, four of the RJD and two of the Congress, had crossed over to the NDA when Chief Minister Nitish Kumar won a trust vote after forming a new government with the BJP in January 2024.

Pleas by the respective parties for their disqualification remained pending before Speaker Nand Kishor Yadav.

Jaiswal also re-inducted Sunil Kumar Pintu, a former MP from Sitamarhi who had joined the JD(U) in 2019, as per the BJP’s instance, after the official JD(U) candidate pulled out of the contest ahead of Lok Sabha polls.

Before getting elected to the Lok Sabha, Pintu was the MLA from Sitamarhi and he had been in a sulk ever since the JD(U) did not consider him for a ticket in last year’s parliamentary polls, when his seat went to Devesh Chandra Thakur, the then Chairman of the state legislative council.

Another person to join the BJP was Sujit Kumar, husband of Swarna Singh, the MLA from Gaura Bauram, who took voluntary retirement from the Indian Revenue Service.

Swarna Singh had won the seat on a ticket of Vikassheel Insaan Party, then an NDA constituent, but joined the BJP when founding president Mukesh Sahni was ousted from the coalition.

Meanwhile, BJP sources said they were looking forward to joining of the remaining rebel MLAs of the Congress-RJD combine, some of whom have already resigned their membership of the assembly. PTI NAC NN