Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was on Sunday elected as JD(U) president, a move that would put him in complete command of the party as its seeks to expand beyond the state and prepares for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
His unanimous election to the top post at the party's national executive meeting brought an end to the decade-old tenure of Sharad Yadav who had ruled himself out for a fourth term.
It is for the first time that Kumar, JD(U)'s face in Bihar, has been elected president of the state-centric party. The party's two previous presidents—George Fernandes and Sharad Yadav—were from outside Bihar.
Kumar's name was proposed by Yadav and seconded by the party's secretary general K.C. Tyagi and general secretary Javed Raza among others, party leaders said following the meeting.
The Bihar Chief Minister, who made a spectacular return to power last year after his party was bruised and battered in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, told the executive about efforts being made to bring parties with similar ideologies together as he accepted the new responsibility, Tyagi said.
Having spearheaded the JD(U)-RJD-Congress alliance to a massive win over BJP-led NDA in the last year's state assembly polls, his party is in talks with Ajit Singh-led RLD and former Jharkhand Chief Minister Babulal Marandi's Jharkhand Vikas Morcha for a merger.
A similar merger move to bring together six Janata Parivar outfits including the Samajwadi Party had come last year ahead of the Bihar polls after SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav walked out of the talks and his party contested the state assembly elections on its own.
JD(U) sees the next year's Uttar Pradesh assembly polls as a major battle before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Tyagi said, as he underlined the importance of the merger attempts to take on BJP.
"We stopped them (BJP) in Bihar and we are working to stop them in UP," he said, noting that sweeping the Lok Sabha polls in these two states was the key to the emphatic win of the saffron alliance.
Asked if JD(U) would make another attempt at merger with Samajwadi Party, he noted that Mulayam Singh Yadav as well as BSP supremo Mayawati had made it clear they will go it alone in the elections.
Party sources said the presence of Kumar, the preeminent party leader, at the helm, will help JD(U) make swift moves with regard to alliances and also help position himself as a rallying point for opposition parties against Modi in the Lok Sabha polls.
