Tejashwi Yadav To Be Nitish Kumar's Deputy Again, Indicate Sources

Tejashwi Yadav will be back as Mr Kumar's deputy and his elder brother Tej Pratap Yadav will be in the cabinet, sources said.

The Mahagathbandhan 2.0 will begin where the first alliance between Nitish Kumar and the Rashtriya Janata Dal had left off, sources in Lalu Yadav's party had indicated. Tejashwi Yadav will be back as Mr Kumar's deputy and his elder brother Tej Pratap Yadav will be in the cabinet, sources said.

While Mr Kumar's break-up with the BJP has been described as a bloodless coup, the path of the split and the details of the next government were being worked out over the last three or four months, sources indicated.

The job was made complicated by Mr Kumar's harsh comments on Tejashwi Yadav -- accused in an alleged corruption case -- when he ended the Grand Alliance with the Congress and the RJD.

"I felt suffocated, my conscience pricked me... there was no other way," he had said after resiging in July 2017. In an apparent reference to the Yadavs, he had said, "It wouldn't be right if I didn't take a stand, I don't do politics of this kind".