The Congress shifted its Bihar MLAs to Hyderabad on Sunday amid speculation about a possible split in the party, but its leaders claimed the move was part of a "khela" (game) to re-establish the Mahagathbandhan government in the state.

While Bihar is now NDA-ruled, Hyderabad is in Congress-governed Telangana and therefore presumed to be a safer place against any poaching attempts by the BJP.

The Congress MLAs have been told to return to Patna on February 12, the day the NDA government takes the floor test.

Jharkhand’s ruling JMM-Congress-RJD-CPIML alliance too recently sent many of its MLAs to Hyderabad as an anti-poaching measure ahead of Monday’s trust vote, called by its new government.

In Hyderabad, the Congress MLAs have been kept in the same resort — Leonia Holistic Destination — as their Jharkhand counterparts and JMM legislators.

Bihar Congress MLAs had been called to Delhi on Friday to attend a meeting chaired by party president Mallikarjun Kharge that discussed the changed political situation in Bihar.

Seventeen of the Congress’s 19 MLAs attended the meeting while two were absent because of illness. Sixteen MLAs were packed off to Hyderabad on Sunday, with one returning to Bihar because of a marriage in the family.

“We have to form the government in Bihar. Our MLAs will return from Hyderabad to Patna on the day of the trust vote,” Bihar Congress president Akhilesh Prasad Singh told The Telegraph. “The NDA government will fall. All the talk about a split in our party is baseless.”

RJD leader Lalu Prasad’s son and former deputy chief minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav had asserted last week, after chief minister Nitish Kumar’s somersault replaced a Mahagathbandhan government with an NDA administration, that this wasn’t the end and Bihar was about to witness a khela.

The NDA is not entirely immune from fears of a split before the floor test, either. Sources said that one of the reasons behind the delay in the expansion of the Nitish cabinet is the apprehension about disgruntled legislators joining hands with the RJD-Congress.

The NDA, with 128 MLAs in the 243-member Assembly, is expected to win the confidence vote but the Opposition alliance’s strength of 114 will keep it on tenterhooks. A small number of MLAs shifting loyalties or the absence of just a handful of legislators can tip the balance.

Sources in the NDA said the ruling alliance was working to rid itself of the “hanging sword” by splitting the Congress. Besides, NDA leaders believe, a split will demoralise not just the Congress but the entire INDIA bloc.