New Delhi: Union minister of state for human resources and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party president Upendra Kushwaha said Nitish Kumar had confided in him that he doesn’t want to continue as chief minister beyond 2020 when the state gets to vote for a new government. Kushwaha, the BJP ally in Bihar, is keeping his alliance partners guessing about his next move.

“I am neither doing any politics nor I am making any satirical comment on the CM, but he (Nitish Kumar) has himself expressed his desire not to continue beyond 2020. I have ruled for 15 years. How long will I be the CM,” Kushwaha quoted Kumar as saying at a party event in Patna to mark Sardar Patel’s birth anniversary.

The union minister, who is in the middle of negotiations with his party’s three other allies in Bihar, added that Nitish Kumar had spoken with “a heavy heart” when he had spoken to him about his intention a few months back.

His claim, made at a programme organised by his party on the occasion of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s 143rd birth anniversary, came as a surprise as neither Nitish Kumar nor anyone in his Janata Dal (United) had ever spoken about any such possibility.

JD (U) spokesperson Neeraj Kumar however brushed aside Kushwaha’s claim, saying Nitish Kumar was chief minister by “virtue of people’s mandate and the legislators’ choice”.

This is not the first time that the RLSP chief has raised the issue of Nitish Kumar’s future as chief minister. In July, he had questioned the logic of going with Kumar as the National Democratic Alliance’s chief ministerial candidate for the 2020 state assembly polls.