Union home minister Amit Shah on Saturday appeared to be trying to create divisions within the Opposition alliance INDIA and lure Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar back to the NDA, largely sparing him while attacking his allies and claiming they would “sink” him.

“The union of the RJD and the Janata Dal United is like mixing oil and water. I have come to tell Nitishbabu that oil and water can never be one, however deep their selfish interests,” Shah said at a rally in Jhanjharpur, Bihar.

“The oil will not lose anything but will make the water dirty,” he added, indicating the RJD was the oil in the equation, before warning Nitish about INDIA: “The alliance you have struck to become Prime Minister is going to sink you.”

Shah’s overtures come at a time Nitish --- who has a history of shuttling between the BJP-led NDA and its opponents --- has been feeling ignored within INDIA. The JDU leader had spearheaded the efforts to form the anti-BJP alliance ahead of the 2024 general election only to see the Congress’s influence over it grow.

Last week, when several Opposition chief ministers refused invitations to the G20 Summit dinner hosted by President Droupadi Murmu in Delhi, Nitish had attended it.

Asked about Shah’s comments, Nitish said: “I don’t pay attention to anything these people say. He speaks nonsense whenever he is here. Does he know how much Bihar has progressed or how much work is being done?”

He added: “They are worried because I have been uniting the Opposition.”

Nitish, a socialist, had been close to RJD leader Lalu Prasad before breaking away in 1994 to form the Samata Party with George Fernandes and tie up with the BJP. Most Samata leaders joined the JDU in 2003. The NDA unseated the RJD in Bihar in 2005 and Nitish became chief minister (after a seven-day stint in the hot seat in 2000).

But Nitish dumped the NDA in 2013 when it declared Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 general election. He won the 2015 Assembly elections in alliance with the RJD and the Congress but switched back to the NDA in 2017 citing corruption charges against his deputy and RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad.

He made his latest somersault – back to the arms of the RJD and the Congress --- in August last year amid increasing tensions with the BJP over its alleged sabotaging of the JDU in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.