Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar reached Delhi on Friday to chair the Janata Dal United’s (JDU) national executive meeting on Saturday.

The meeting assumes significance in the light of senior BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Choubey’s statement that the saffron party “will have its own chief minister in Bihar in 2025 and it should contest the elections on its own”.

Nitish is currently the JDU president but he could appoint another leader to bear the responsibility.

Nitish will first hold a meeting with the JDU’s national office-bearers in Delhi and then follow it up with the national executive.

Bihar is expected to go to the Assembly polls around October next year.

Sources in the JDU said Choubey’s comment had annoyed top party leaders who read it as an arm-twisting method of the BJP, which was currently the largest party in the Legislative Assembly as well as the Legislative Council, with 78 and 24 members, respectively.

BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav is the Speaker of the Assembly while Awadhesh Narain Singh is Chairman of the Council by dint of the party’s supremacy in the bicameral Bihar legislature.

“Though we are allies of the BJP and part of the NDA, we will obviously have to sit up and look if any senior BJP leader gives a statement that his party will have its own chief minister next year. Such remarks, that too in public, are against the alliance ethics,” a senior JDU leader told The Telegraph.

The BJP rushed to damage control for more obvious reasons, as the JDU, with 12 Lok Sabha members, is one of the major allies propping up the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre.

“Modiji has clearly stated that the NDA will contest the 2025 Assembly polls under the leadership of Nitishji. There is no confusion. Our state president Samrat Choudhary has also iterated this among our leaders and workers. Our party has already held a review meeting in the context of the recent Lok Sabha and the upcoming Assembly elections. The JDU is going to do so on Saturday,” Bihar BJP spokesperson Prabhakar Mishra said.

Senior JDU leaders said that the national executive would analyse the party’s performance in the recent Lok Sabha polls in which it contested 16 seats and won 12. There will be discussion on whether the party’s core vote bank, including the extremely backward castes, supported the candidates and how far the allied parties helped them.

“The national executive will also discuss the role of the party’s Union ministers and their priorities as well as the Assembly polls due next year. The leaders could be given tasks pertaining to strengthen the organisational structure of the party and also assess the major issues related to the public,” a senior JDU leader told this newspaper.

Over a 100 senior JDU leaders are expected to participate in the national executive, which will end with Nitish’s speech.