Preparations at Ramlila Maidan on Saturday for the Adhikar Rally in New Delhi. Picture by Prem Singh

New Delhi, March 16: Nitish Kumar’s Sunday date with Delhi, in the form of an Adhikar Rally to seek special rights for Bihar, promises to be a show of strength minus ally BJP and comes in the backdrop of cautious attempts by the Congress to court the JD(U) boss.

The rally, primarily to amplify Bihar’s case for grant of special rights closer to the centre of power, is expected to be used by the chief minister to indicate his political positioning, given his issues with Narendra Modi, the BJP’s most brightly-burning star.

Modi, in the recent past, has had more than one date with Delhi, but this would be Nitish’s first engagement of its kind in the country’s political capital. Never has Delhi seen a show to demand special rights for Bihar to catch up with developed states such as Gujarat.

Nitish left Patna for Delhi on Saturday afternoon — also present in the national capital was Modi, who was to address the annual India Today conclave, “Re-inventing Democracy”, later in the evening with a presentation titled “The NaMo Mantra”.

Nitish’s rally would be an exclusive JD(U) affair with coalition partner BJP being kept at arm’s length, evidently to appropriate all credit for Bihar’s cause to itself. No BJP leader has been invited to make even a guest appearance at the Ramlila ground, the venue of the rally.

While seeking to ignore the BJP, which is holding its state executive meeting in Patna over the weekend, Nitish has already tried to broad-base his political appeal, saying his rally would raise the cause of all backward states, not just Bihar, including those ruled by powerful regional leaders like Mamata Banerjee in Bengal and Naveen Patnaik in Odisha.

“Though we are raising Bihar’s case, Nitish Kumar’s demand is for all backward states. Our leader wants to champion the cause of all backward states,” said RCP Singh, a bureaucrat-turned JD(U) MP, considered close to Nitish.

The rally promises to be a mammoth show of strength given the way Nitish’s ministers, legislators, party MPs and other leaders are working and is intended to send a signal to the BJP that the JD(U) was not dependent on the senior ally in Parliament to make its voice heard.

“Ramlila ground would prove to be too small for the crowd. Bihar, under Nitish Kumar’s leadership, will make its voice heard and demand its rightful due,” said JD(U) leader Anil Pathak, who has been camping in Delhi seeing to arrangements.

Given the many “ifs” and “buts” attached with his relationship with the BJP, Nitish’s show of strength would be keenly watched, particularly with the Congress indicating that it was testing waters to gauge the possibility of getting the JD(U) in the UPA, post-2014.

The first hint came through UPA-II’s last budget before the elections next year when finance minister P. Chidambaram promised to revisit the criteria for determining backwardness and earned fulsome praise from Nitish.

The second hint was the more-than-customary thanksgiving tweet from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to commend Bihar’s 10.9 per cent growth under Nitish, underlining that it was above Gujarat. The Bihar chief minister returned it with “bahut bahut dhanyawad”.

These developments seem to have set off the alarm in the BJP and it has been careful not to annoy its “valuable” ally. Sources said top leaders of the BJP weighed on Narendra Modi to cancel his show in Mumbai, coinciding with Nitish’s rally in Delhi. The BJP felt it would not go down well with Nitish as the media would use it to make a comparison between the two leaders.

Nitish, however, continues to keep his cards close to his chest. Political observers would be riveted on his Sunday speech looking for clues to ascertain the way the JD(U) was headed with Lok Sabha elections just over a year away.