Nitish Kumar meets PM Modi after BJP’s Bankipur bypoll defeat

JD-U chief Nitish Kumar met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament a day after the BJP lost the Bankipur Assembly by-election in Bihar. Kumar described it as a courtesy meeting amid renewed political focus following the surprise electoral setback

New Delhi: JD-U supremo and former chief minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar on Tuesday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a day after the BJP lost Patna’s Bankipur assembly seat in a by-election. Kumar, a Rajya Sabha MP, was accompanied by JD-U leaders — Union minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh and Rajya Sabha MP and national working president Sanjay Kumar Jha – in his meeting with the prime minister.

“Rajya Sabha MP Shri @NitishKumar Ji met PM @narendramodi earlier today,” the prime minister’s office said in a post on ‘X’. Kumar said he paid a courtesy call on the Prime Minister at his office room in the Parliament House complex here.

---

The by-election at Bankipur, considered a BJP bastion, was necessitated after BJP president Nitin Nabin vacated the seat following his election to Rajya Sabha after he assumed the charge of party chief. Poll strategist-turned-politician and Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor defeated BJP’s Neeraj Kumar by a margin of 19,324 votes.

The BJP and JD-U are running a coalition government in Bihar. Kumar, the ten-time chief minister of Bihar, resigned from the state’s top post in April, following which, for the first time, a BJP leader, Samrat Choudhary, assumed the charge of chief minister.