The curiosity surrounding the cancellation of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar's dinner to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s national executive members in Patna on Saturday continues to fuel speculation.

Insiders in the BJP say that Kumar had made up his mind to cancel the dinner for the BJP national executive on Friday night itself. His fulmination against Modi and his sympathisers for putting up advertisements euologising the Gujarat chief minister was a well-choreographed political manoeuvre to wriggle out of the situation.

Sources say that Kumar had conveyed through his aides to the BJP that the invitation for the dinner did not include Modi and Varun Gandhi. The reason for this exclusion was obvious. Since Modi and Varun evoke a strong reaction among the Muslims, Kumar believed that their presence at the CM's dinner would be politically counter-productive.

An intermediary acting between the JD (U) and the BJP delivered the invitation card to the BJP's office secretary on Friday night. However, the same intermediary rushed back to the secretary and withdrew the invitation barely a few hours later when the chief minister made up his mind to cancel the dinner. Obviously, the BJP refused to accept the conditional invitation for the dinner.

That the invitation was seen as a humiliation became the theme of discussion in the Saturday's meeting. Even state BJP president CP Thakur is learnt to have advised the BJP's central leadership to avoid the dinner in order to preserve some “self-respect”. LK Advani and other leaders readily agreed to forgo the conditional dinner invitation. Kumar was quick to grasp the BJP leaders' mood and declared unilaterally the cancellation of the dinner.

Though a section of BJP leaders in Bihar admits that the overbearing advertisements featuring Modi were certainly not appropriate, it believes Kumar’s reaction was rather uncalled for. “In one stroke, he turned the entire BJP leadership against him,” said a senior state leader. The apparent implication of this war of nerves between the BJP and the JD is that the BJP would go ahead with its plan of Modi leading the campaign three months from now. Such a situation runs the risk of putting further pressure on the coalition to reach a breaking point.