Patna, Sept. 18: Politicians love doing somersaults.

Till a couple of weeks ago, former minister Dadan Pahalwan alias Dadan Yadav was daily issuing statements calling RJD chief Lalu Prasad and chief minister Nitish Kumar the "number one enemy of the Yadavs".

On Friday, Dadan suddenly surfaced in Nitish Kumar's 10 Circular Road house with state JDU chief Bashishtha Narayan Singh. When he came out he was humming a different tune.

He applauded Lalu Prasad "a champion of the downtrodden" and Nitish Kumar as "Vikas Purush". "It hardly needed any guessing to realise that Dadan will be our candidate from some seat in Buxar," said a JDU leader.

Dadan, a former teacher-turned-wrestler-turned politician, came into the limelight in 2000 when he won as an Independent from Dumraon Assembly seat. Made a junior minister of commercial taxes in the Rabri Devi government, he proved to be an embarrassment for the government several times. In 2005 February elections, he won as a Samajwadi Party candidate but lost again in the November polls.

He has been in political wilderness for a decade despite the fact that he gets over a lakh votes every time he stands from the Buxar parliamentary seat.

"Dadan approached us also for a ticket. But he was so demanding about seats we had to turn him down," said a BJP leader. The 10 Circular Road residence of the chief minister was buzzing with activities today, as Nitish had called his candidates and handed over the symbol, a day ahead of the party officially announcing its candidates. "These things happen during the elections," said Bashishtha. Sitting MLAs such as Manju Verma of Cheriya Baruyarpur in Begusarai and Gopal Mandal of Gopalpur in Bhagalpur came smiling.

One of them displayed the "official symbol" and declared that he would first go to Hanuman Mandir for prayers and then to his constituency for the contest. According to sources, the JDU is going to field MLC Neeraj Kumar from Mokama, which was represented by jailed former JDU MLA Anant Singh.

According to JDU sources, Nitish is distributing tickets to the selected candidates "secretly" to avoid ruckus created by sitting MLAs, who have been denied tickets.

"He was actually alarmed when a sitting BJP MLA, Aman Paswan, after being denied ticket by his party rushed within 12 hours to 10 Circular Road and asked him for a JDU ticket. Nitishji told him to approach RJD chief, as the seat was going to them. But he wanted to avoid such scenes," said a senior JDU leader pointing out that even Lalu was doing the same.