“I didn’t wanted to be the Chief Minister after the 2020 results but i was put under pressure… (but) ask people in the party what they have been reduced to. Then you see what happened . I have not even spoken to you in two months,” Mr Kumar said in his address.

“How many seats did we win in 2015? And then we went with the same people and look at what we have been reduced to,” he added.

Countering the BJP accusation that he has let down the people and betrayed their mandate, he added, “Whether i will stay or not, let the people say what they have to say.”

The BJP held a massive protest in Patna today and declared that they will hold protests in the districts too. State BJP chief Dr Sanjay Jaiswal said the people of Bihar will never forgive Nitish Kumar.

Nitish Kumar ended the alliance with the BJP after he felt that Amit Shah was attempting a repeat of the Maharashtra model – where the Uddhav Thackeray government was dismantled with the rebellion by Eknath Shinde, a senior leader of the Shiv Sena. Eknath Shinde was rewarded by the BJP with the post of Maharashtra Chief Minister.

Mr Kumar’s anger with the BJP breached the danger mark over reports that Union Home Minister Amit Shah was foraging within the JDU for defectors. The Chief Minister felt that RCP Singh, a senior leader from his party, who had joined the union cabinet, was being used to turn the JDU against him.

He therefore refused to extend RCP Singh’s term in the Rajya Sabha, which meant that the latter had to resign from PM Modi’s cabinet. On the weekend, Nitish Kumar’s aides publicly accused RCP Singh of corruption; in protest, he quit the JDU.

Switching partners mid-term is an established trait of Nitish Kumar and one that has triggered vast criticism of his ideological flexibility and willingness to trade principles for power.

Till 2013, Nitish Kumar was in partnership with the BJP, though it was a fractious collaboration once it became clear that Narendra Modi would emerge as the BJP’s main leader.

In 2015, he cut the chord with the BJP and formed the government with Lalu Yadav and the Congress. In 2017, Nitish Kumar stomped out of the three-party alliance, claiming that the insatiable corruption of Tejashwi Yadav as a minister could not be tolerated by him.