Even he did not have it with me. This alliance is not going anywhere. “I have never any party more afraid before the elections“, Kumar told the media here.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday said there was not much to hope from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of new projects during his visit on July 25 to the State, but he would welcome him. The LJP chief was the first to quit NDA after the Gujarat riots in 2002 and his Lok Janshakti Party had been in an alliance with the RJD since 2009.

Pappu invited RJD’s national vice-president and former Union minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh to join JAP. “Raghuvansh Babu is like my father”. In the first few years of the UPA-I, both had bitter relations, which was said to have emanated because of claims over Railway portfolio. “This cosmetic coming together of the two will not work”, said Paswan.

After the defeat of the Congress-RJD-JDU alliance in the recent MLC elections for Bihar, Raghubansh Prasad Singh said that RJD workers were not enthused seeing only the photo of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in all promotional hoardings and the alliance was not moving in the right direction.

“His announcement would be packaging of the existing ones initiated by me and approved by the UPA”, Mr. Kumar said.

“The alliance partners should take the “positives” out of each other and overcome the “negatives”, the PCC chief said.

On the 2009 poll debacle, he claimed that Prasad benefited from his votebase but RJD chief’s supporters did not vote for LJP.

Latching on to Prasad’s remarks that his party will counter with “tumtums” or horse-carts the BJP’s “parivartan raths” or chariots in Bihar, Paswan said, “Lalu has exposed the tall development claims made by Nitish Kumar”. He was referring to 25- year rule of Lalu and Nitish in Bihar, while talking to newsmen at the JAP office here.