Chief minister Nitish Kumar greets member of the House of Lords and chairman of Cobra Beer, Karan Bilimoria, at 1 Aney Marg on Tuesday. Bilimoria, who met Nitish along with a few delegates, praised Bihar’s growth rate. Telegraph picture

New Delhi, June 19: Nitish Kumar has told close political associates in unequivocal terms to “be prepared to go it alone and even lose power” if his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi becomes NDA frontrunner for 2014.

“If that happens, this alliance is over, no two ways about it,” sources close to the Bihar chief minister told The Telegraph today. “We are ready for the consequences and the BJP should not complain it did not know. Nitish Kumar has made it plain long ago that Narendra Modi’s leadership is not acceptable.”

Modi’s aggressive posturing that the recent Mumbai national executive of the BJP — he arrived only when the leadership had relented in shown bete noire Sanjay Joshi the door — had left Nitish uneasy. The subsequent banishment of Joshi, a mid-level functionary, from the BJP roster fuelled his foreboding that Modi was “assuming control” of the party and would be “unstoppable” in the leadership stakes.

Nitish’s renewed brinkmanship over the Bihar alliance is a dare aimed at barricading that possibility — he is signalling to the BJP leadership that should they promote Modi to the forefront, they will lose their strongest ally.

As a close Nitish aide put it: “We have no wish to intervene in internal matters of the BJP, we are only saying what they decide can have an impact on our attitude, Modi may be acceptable, even preferable, to them, he is totally unacceptable to us. What the BJP thinks good for itself may not be good for this alliance.”

His insistence that the future leader of the NDA should be a “secular-liberal” person and should be declared ahead of the campaign for 2014 amounts to emphasising a line Nitish drew long ago when he insisted — successfully — that Bihar should remain off-limits for Modi.

The Bihar chief minister is clearly stating he will not let himself into an alliance blindly to find Modi revealed as leader when it is too late to pull back. Neither is he prepared to contribute to critical parliamentary numbers that will add up to making the stage for the Gujarat chief minister’s ascent on the national stage.

Other than prime ministerial ambition, which neither currently admits to, bitter history divides the two chief ministers. At Ludhiana, during the campaign of 2009, Modi had taken Nitish’s hand and raised it aloft for the bay of photographers. The picture became a campaign poster that Nitish thinks is an embarrassment.

During the Patna national executive session of the BJP in 2010, Modi had the same photograph published as a full-page backdrop to an advertisement in local dailies hailing flood-relief aid Gujarat had sent to Bihar. Provoked and offended, Nitish summarily scrapped his dinner invitation to the gathered BJP brass, returned Modi’s cheque and nearly broke the alliance. It survived only because the BJP gave in to Nitish’s bottom-line terms of partnership: Modi will have no say or role in Bihar.

Modi played no part in the 2010 Assembly polls, which the Nitish-led alliance won with a landslide, but the JD(U) senses Modi has continued to “taunt” Nitish from afar. The latest in the series of the JD(U)’s perceived affronts was Modi’s statement that Bihar had been “let down by casteist leaders”. Nitish responded with a sharp barb — Modi’s own sieve leaks in 72 places. In other words, those who live in glasshouses should not chuck stones at others.

The Bihar JD(U) has been miffed by concerted recent efforts by BJP-RSS cadres to woo specific extremely backward and Mahadalit groups, a constituency Nitish sees as his own. He never spoke openly but conveyed his ire personally to BJP leaders. The JD(U)’s decision to contest the UP elections separately and to plough a separate furrow on the presidential race too can be viewed in the context of Nitish seeking to assert or distance himself.

There is a strong — though not yet central — view in the Nitish camp that the alliance with the BJP has “run its course” and the chief minister should strike out on his own ahead of the 2014 general elections irrespective of what happens with Modi.

At the core of this line lies the assumption that the next Lok Sabha will be even more fractured than the current one and numbers will be critical. Under the current arrangement with the BJP, the JD(U) gets to contest 25 of Bihar’s 40 Lok Sabha seats and the BJP 15. Votaries of the go-it-alone school argue that it is better for Nitish to play with all 40 seats in hand rather than just 25.

“What do we have to lose?” asked one pro-split JD(U) leader. “With 25 seats, we may get 20-odd at best, with 40, we could go beyond 30. Nitish Kumar is on a good wicket, the achievements of the government are perceived as his, he stands to gain.”

Nitish is probably the only BJP ally to have secured an incremental constituency among Muslims and considers Modi’s image not merely unpalatable but a threat to his politics. Breaking with the BJP, pro-break leaders say, will consolidate his position among the minorities. On the other hand, it may rob him sections of the BJP vote that accrue to him. Some counter that saying non-upper caste consolidation in his favour will get stronger. Over past years, Nitish has crafted a new political base among the state’s extremely backward and Mahadalit sections in addition to sections of the urban populations that see him as insurance against a lapse into the Lalu-era lawlessness.