Hours later, Congress leader Kanhaiya Kumar, who has his roots in Bihar’s Begusarai, confirmed that Tejashwi Prasad Yadav would be the CM candidate of the Opposition INDIA bloc. “There is no confusion or doubt over Tejashwi being CM candidate of the Opposition,” he told the media.Kumar said that it was a conspiracy of the ruling dispensation to create confusion about the CM face of the Opposition. He claimed that the BJP would remove Chief Minister Nitish Kumar from the post once they got the chance. “This is BJP’s standard template—first to take support of any regional party and then slowly swallow it,” he added.Continuing his attack on the BJP, Kumar said that they would not make ‘Operation Sindoor’ a poll plank as they knew the people of Bihar would not vote for them on the issue, as they believed it to be a matter of the nation’s pride and honour and that no political party should politicise it.Incidentally, both Akhilesh and Kanhaiya, who supported Tejashwi as the CM face, belong to the dominant upper caste—Bhumihar. Their statements contradict an earlier remark made by the Bihar in-charge of the party, Krishna Allavaru, who said that the CM candidate would be decided after the assembly elections when top leaders of alliance partners would sit together.A political analyst noted that the Congress’s central leadership does not want to project Tejashwi as the CM face, fearing that the ruling dispensation would revive the ‘Jungle Raj’ narrative during the campaign, which may hurt the prospects of the Opposition alliance in the elections.
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