Nitish Kumar and (below) Narendra Modi

New Delhi, Sept. 19: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar will pull the plug on his alliance with the BJP, and effectively fracture the NDA, if it formally names Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate.

This has been quietly but firmly and unequivocally conveyed to those who regularly interlocute between the BJP and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), the largest NDA ally.

“Nitishji is absolutely clear there can be no compromise on this question,” a top political aide of the Bihar chief minister told The Telegraph as Modi wound up his air-conditioned extravaganza widely seen as a high-voltage grab at national leadership ahead of the next general elections.

Modi’s repeated references to “desh (nation)” rather than “pradesh (state)” during his closing speech and his deliberate articulation of the “national goals of my sadbhavna mission” have left few in doubt that the controversial Gujarat leader has set his eyes on New Delhi.

“There are principles and conditions on which the JD(U)-BJP alliance works, if those are violated it will have to end, no two ways about it,” he said, adding that Nitish was “mentally prepared” to put his government at stake should there come a situation in which he would be asked to accept Modi as NDA spearhead.

Nitish has refrained from any comment on Modi’s possible candidacy for prime ministership, pleading that no such proposal exists.

He dismissed Modi’s fast as a “Gujarat issue” in Patna today and consciously kept his views to himself. But privately, his message to the BJP is crisp and terse: make Modi your leader and you lose me.

Nitish and Modi have an acerbic history. The Bihar chief minister has bluntly refused to allow Modi to campaign for the NDA in election after election in the state without stating a reason. The unstated truth is Nitish considers Modi a “communal maverick” who would scare his carefully nurtured minority voter.

There also exists between the two an undeclared war over the prime ministerial stakes for 2014, and one-upmanship has often come to the fore.

In the summer of 2010, Nitish angrily withdrew a personal dinner invitation to the BJP top brass gathered in Patna for the party’s national executive after Modi put an advertisement in local papers bragging about Gujarat’s flood-relief aid to Bihar. “The incident touched off a crisis that all but broke the alliance.

Nitish returned the Rs 5 crore relief cheque and the coalition was salvaged only after he extracted an express, though unpublicised, guarantee from the BJP leadership that Modi will not play any part in it.

“We have an alliance with the BJP, not the Gujarat BJP,” Nitish is believed to have told top BJP leaders at the time.

But as Modi foregrounds his national claims, Nitish is sharpening his opposition, fully aware that he, more than anyone within the BJP, is capable of turning the scales against Modi by playing on the BJP’s need for a credible alliance.

The Bihar chief minister is probably also conscious of significant pockets within the BJP that stand opposed to Modi for both personal and ideological reasons but are not able to speak out their views.

Nitish’s stealth threat has enormous implications for the NDA’s ambitions of regaining power at the Centre, and has a section of BJP leaders deeply worried.

“Chhati par baith kar leadership ka daave kar rahe hain Modiji, NDA par bura asar padega (Modi is forcing the issue on leadership, this will affect the NDA adversely),” a senior BJP leader from Bihar said today, conceding the dilemma the party suddenly finds itself astride.

The BJP leadership finds itself pincered between the gallop of Modi’s ambition which it can’t find ways to bridle, and the prospect of losing precious allies such as the JD(U), which are critical to its bid for power at the Centre.

Even though most top BJP leaders — L.K. Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley included — endorsed the Modi show, there are strong reservations in the party about anointing him nominee for the top job ahead of the elections. Modi, in their count, disrupts the arithmetic of coalitions because of his “divisive” image.

If he drives away allies like Nitish, many believe, others might follow suit and the NDA itself might come unstuck.

There is also a strong perception that the architecture and intents of Modi’s three-day fast could backfire because, despite its well-orchestrated “sadbhavna” atmospherics, it is being seen as little more than spectacular self-aggrandisement.

“Fasts are about larger causes and introspection,” said a BJP leader, clearly edgy over where Modi could push himself with the “sadbhavna” show. “This was about his own cause and his own promotion. That has not escaped people.”

There is a section in the party that is, in fact, increasingly uneasy over high-profile internal rivalry for the top job which becomes available only in 2014, should all go to script. Modi, with his fast and Advani with his projected rath yatra, have both thrown their hats in the ring in a manner that shows up the BJP as a divided house ringing with competitive ambitions.

Insistent though Modi’s plea is to “extend the Gujarat example across the country”, voices rising off the carpet television coverage of his enterprise also suggest that few of those he now seeks to woo in his bid to gain a national constituency are impressed.

His deliberate showcasing of Muslim support is ample evidence even Modi believes he needs to be seen as a “secular” leader to expand beyond Gujarat. But then, the showcasing has been just that: window-dressing.

Muslim bodies across the nation continue to damn him for not even making a show of remorse for the 2002 violence. Besides, they argue, remorse and tears is not what they seek. It’s justice they want, and they don’t see it coming.

That’s the kind of deficit leaders like Nitish Kumar would play on to block Modi’s national ambitions.