#FPasksNitish Live: I don't meet tantrics very often, says Nitish Kumar

Jab tak samosa mein rahega aloo, tab tak Bihar mein rahega Lalu. Probably, that’s a passe and if today Bihar Assembly elections are to be talked about, it is all about an engineering graduate who now holds the reins of Bihar. Yes, you guessed it right, it is the incumbent Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, without whose name hardly an election chat took place this time. True, between 2005-15, he brought out Bihar extensively, if not completely, from the dungeon of jungle raj that once ruled supreme during the heydays of Lalu Prasad and Rabri Devi. But today, the fabled bete noire in Bihar’s political history between Lalu and Prasad is now another epitome of on-the-job friendship. [caption id=“attachment_2486596” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Join us as we ask Nitish Kumar questions on Twitter. Image courtesy: PTI[/caption] Nitish Kumar’s tiff with the then NDA’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi took everyone by surprise. He was severely criticised for it and resigned as CM in May 2014 after JD(U)’s poor performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. However, he was back as Bihar CM after a political crisis in the state in February, 2015 when the then chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, one of Nitish’s close aides in JD(U), went against him and refused to resign as CM. Eventually though, Manjhi did have to resign and was also expelled from the party. Whether it is Nitish Kumar allying with former bitter rival and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav to his claims that the Modi government is trying to create communal divide in the country, the media just cannot get enough of Nitish. And this fact has not changed even when the Bihar Assembly polls are underway. Nitish Kumar was in the media spotlight when he and Lalu Prasad used the Patel agitation row to counter BJP’s ‘jungle raj 2.0’ and allege that the saffron party was trying to abolish reservation. He was in the news when the JD(U)-RJD-Congress alliance in Bihar attacked the BJP government over the Dadri killing and alleged that the Modi government had remained silent and the prime minister had not made a strong enough statement in the wake of the incident. Nitish also received criticism when a video emerged showing Awadhesh Prasad Kushwaha, former minister for urban development in Bihar, allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 4 lakh from a ‘Bombay-based businessman’ at his residence. Political and personal mud-slinging flew wildly during the run up to the Bihar Assembly polls and continued even during the elections. Not surprisingly, no mercy was shown and no words were minced to destroy the opposition. Whether it is PM Modi saying Nitish betrayed Jayaprakash Narayan by joining hands with Congress and RJD and referring to the three parties of the grand secular alliance in Bihar as the ’three idiots’ or the BJP releasing a video showing Nitish meeting a tantrik to seek his blessings, the heat has often been on Nitish Kumar. One of the focal points of Bihar polls, Nitish Kumar is also active on Twitter and makes sure that his campaigning online receives as much attention. As the polling for the third phase of Bihar polls gets over today, join us as we ask Nitish Kumar questions of Twitter in the middle of one of most heated elections in the country in present times. You can tweet your question to Nitish Kumar using the hashtag #FPasksNitish.