Venkiah Naidu to represent PM Modi at Nitish Kumar’s oath taking cermeony

The Prime Minister had earlier congratulated Nitish on the day of the ballot outcomes on November 8 after the grand alliance (Mahagathbandhan) secured an enormous victory in Bihar Assembly elections.

The official guest list has names of nine Chief Ministers, including West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

CPM General Secretary SitaramYechury, D Raja of CPI, whose parties contested against the JD(U) led combine and but are anti-BJP in nature, and M K Stalin of the DMK have also confirmed their participation.

The event would also be graced by former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah besides Sheila Dikshit, Bhupendra Singh Hooda, Ajit Jogi, Babu Lal Marandi, Hemant Soren of the JMM and Shankar Singh Vaghela. However, the leaders couldn’t say what transpired between Modi and Nitish.

The Congress on Wednesday alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would gradually be reduced to half if the party leadership starts taking responsibility for the humiliating defeat in the recently held Bihar Assembly polls.

There will be 16 ministers from the RJD, 15 from the JD-U and five from the Congress in the new government.

Supporters of the Janata Dal-United, RJD and Congress from across Bihar are expected to pour into the Gandhi Maidan.

Mr Kishore said considering arrival of so many VIPs, more than 2,000 security personnel would be deployed at the venue.

“Such a thing has never happened”.

Friday’s gathering would be the first major show of anti-BJP unity since Modi became the prime minister in May 2014. State BJP spokesman Sanjay Mayukh said the PM would not be able to attend the oath-taking ceremony due to his prior engagements.

Launching a frontal attack on the party leadership, BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha on Wednesday said those with “vested interests” are refusing to learn lessons from the Bihar debacle and asserted that no one has the guts or DNA to tick him off, an apparent dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Lalu Prasad and JD-U president Sharad Yadav will be the main guests at the event.