The Janata Dal-United (JDU) unit of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu on Sunday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Delhi in the presence of party chief JP Nadda and the National General Secretary BL Santhosh.
16 members of the JDU unit joined the BJP which including ex-state president of JDU.
The development comes after the JDU stitched alliance with RJD and others to form the 'Mahagathbandhan' (Grand Alliance) government in Bihar.
"Members of JDU of Daman and Diu and the entire unit of state JDU joined the BJP today against Nitish Kumar's decision to leave the BJP which had given impetus to development in Bihar and to choose the 'Bahubali', corrupt and a dynastic party," BJP said in a tweet earlier last week.
Nitish Kumar is meeting the leaders of various parties across the country these days to create an atmosphere against the BJP for the 2024 general elections. However, Nitish Kumar denied speculation on his Prime Ministerial candidature, saying that "I am not even a claimant, I don't even desire it."
Earlier in the first week of September, five out of six Janata Dal (United) MLAs in Manipur had joined the BJP. After Manipur JDU MLAs joined BJP, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Modi took a dig at Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, saying that states like Manipur and Arunachal have become JDU-free.
Notably, a few days ago, a bulk of JDU MLAs in Arunachal Pradesh joined the saffron party and very recently 5 out of 7 MLAs from Manipur embraced the BJP.
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On 25 August 2022, the lone JDU MLA from Arunachal Pradesh joined the saffron party in the presence of national president JP Nadda and Arunachal CM Pema Khandu.BJP stands at 49 out of 60 Assembly seats (MLA) with the merger of lone JDU MLA Techi Kaso with BJP. Out of 9 Corporators of JDU, 8 have joined BJP; now a total number of BJP corporators is 18 out of 20.Further17 out of 18 Zilla Parishad Members (ZPM) of JDU joined BJP. Now out of 241 ZPM, BJP is with 206 ZPM.In addition, out of 119 Gram Panchayat Members (GPM) of JDU, more than 100 joined BJP and with this BJP GPM are around 6,530 out of 8,332 GPM.
Notably, In the first week of August, Nitish Kumar's party had severed its ties with the BJP in Bihar and walked out of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) alliance.