“Our party is not going to support any candidate and we will not issue a whip. Our MLAs are free to vote according to their conscience,” Lalu said.

The BJP’s most powerful face, Sushil Kumar Modi, sought to sound politically correct.

“The BJP is nowhere in the game. We will inquire into how our party leader, Dilip Jaiswal, has joined the fray and how the party MLAs have proposed his name,” he said. JDU sources scoffed at the statement, saying neither Jaiswal nor the BJP proposers could have acted on their own.

In the morning, the JDU camp was confident they had tamed the rebellion.

“There may be angry MLAs in our party. But very few will go to the extent of voting against our official candidates,” parliamentary affairs minister Srawan Kumar, tasked with mobilizing MLAs, told The Telegraph.

Around 2.10pm, the loyalists were in for a shock as around 15 rebel JDU MLAs and one Independent member trooped into the office of the secretary along with Sabir Ali and Anil Sharma, the vanquished JDU candidate in Jehanabad.

The rebel band included Gyanendra Kumar Gyanu, Dawood Ali, Renu Devi, Raju Kumar Singh, Ravindar Rai, Neeraj Bablu, Ajit Kumar, Anil Kumar, Rahul Sharma, Sujata Devi, Amla Devi, Poonam Devi, Gajanand Shahi, Madan Sahni, Dinesh Kushwaha and Independent MLA Pawan Jaiswal. Ten minutes later, BJP MLAs came with their candidate Dilip Jaiswal.

“Just wait for June 19 when the polling will take place. We have the support of more than 50 JDU MLAs. This is a fight between the asli (real) JDU and the nakli (false) JDU. We are the asli JDU and all our candidates will win,” Gyanu said.

The brazen show of strength by the rebel camp left the Nitish loyalists shell-shocked. “We did not expect this many MLAs to come out openly against the party leadership,” admitted a JDU minister.