Patna, Feb. 18: Support, in case of crisis in the Assembly.

The mood in the BJP camp is to stand by the chief minister when he faces the floor test on February 20. However, the party is willing to discuss the issue threadbare before finalising its stand.

'Legislators in general were of the view that the party should support Jitan Ram Manjhi as he stands against Nitish Kumar - the man who used the BJP as per his convenience and dumped it ahead of the Lok Sabha elections,' BJP spokesperson Vinod Narayan Jha, who represents Bennipatti Assembly constituency, told The Telegraph while emerging out of the BJP legislature party held today.

He added that the party leaders would hold one more round of meeting with legislators tomorrow before finalising its stand on the Manjhi issue. Senior party leaders, including party state-in-charge Bhupendra Yadav, Sushil Kumar Modi and Nand Kishore Yadav, were present in the meeting. The leaders would hold one more round of meeting with all the party MLAs.

The BJP has 87 MLAs in the House, which has at present an effective strength of 233 MLAs. While eight of the MLAs stand disqualified in the House of 243, two seats are lying vacant. Manjhi needs to garner support of at least 30 MLAs if he is hoping to win the vote of confidence with support of BJP legislators.

Giving reasons for mood of the BJP MLAs to go with Manjhi, an insider said the party hoped to get a favourable response from the Mahadalit voters who constitute about 16 per cent of the state's vote share.

'If Nitish, who came to power on anti-Lalu Prasad plank, can join hands with the RJD hoping to get support of 15 per cent of Yadav voters what is wrong in wooing the Mahadalits by standing with Manjhi who belongs to the same community and who has been discarded by both Nitish and Lalu?' said a BJP leader while explaining the political benefits which the BJP was expecting to get in the next Assembly elections by taking sides with Manjhi.