Visibly worried Nitish lashes out at Paswan, calls him "unprincipled"

Describing Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan as a leader who proved that “there is nothing called ideology in politics”, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Friday termed the BJP-LJP alliance as “unprincipled”. [caption id=“attachment_1412751” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Bihar CM Nitish Kumar. PTI.[/caption] “This alliance has nothing to do with principles. This is strange but true,” Kumar said today, reacting to Paswan’s return to the NDA, which he left in 2002 over the Gujarat violence. “The decision and the path have been chosen as per the situation,” Nitish remarked. The leader of the Janata Dal (United) and prime mover of the so-called federal front, likely to be the most  affected by the BJP-LJP alliance,  lashed out at Ram Vilas Paswan today, saying the LJP leader “never had any priniciples”, reports  NDTV. “The BJP, which enjoys the backing of the upper castes and the Baniyas, or the traders’ community, can now bank on the support of the Paswans and the Kushwahas, both powerful backward castes that constitute about 5% each in the state,” the report said. Stitching up an alliance with Paswan is not the BJP’s only attempt to court votes in the state. Four JD-U Parliamentarians  who were expelled for criticising Nitish and speaking out in support of the BJP are likely to join the BJP, leaving the JD-U on shaky ground. Even though the alliance marks a fundamental shift in LJP’s approach for over the a decade, Paswan’s exit from the Congress-RJD-LJP alliance comes primarily due to his  discomfort  with RJD’s Lalu Prasad’s and Modi’s rising popularity. Meanwhile, amid parties scrambling to tie up with each other to make the 272+ figure, LJP’s exit from the proposed Congress-LJP-RJD combine has further diminished the prospects of the depleted Rashtriya Janata Dal. Lalu’s decision to not align with the UPA in 2009 and subsequent conviction in the fodder scam case had made it a steeper climb for the RJD chief, who stands to lose just as much as Kumar. As the elections inch closer, many electoral alliance have drastically changed the political landscape. With PTI inputs