A known opponent of Narendra Modi, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s silence on BJP’s elevation of his Gujarat counterpart as head of the national election committee is intriguing.

Addressing the media in Patna on Monday afternoon, Kumar said he has taken note of the development at the BJP’s Goa summit and would discuss it with party members. "Our party will consider the latest developments and then clarify our stand," he said, just for records.

This muted response from Kumar is a far cry from the shrill stance he has taken time and again for months prior to Modi’s coronation. After all, his “PM should have secular credentials” salvo, fired directly at Modi, is all too well known.  

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Accepted, that the BJP has stopped short of naming Modi as its PM candidate. However, with almost everyone in the anti-Modi camp falling in line, it is not lost on anyone that the main NDA partner has got behind the Gujarat chief minister. And that ultimately he would be the party’s face for the general election 2014.

Nitish Kumar’s tempering of tone could be partly explained by his party’s defeat in the Maharajgaunj bypolls, which went to the incumbent RJD by a huge margin, and NDA partner BJP’s role in it. 

Another explanation for Kumar not honouring his threat of breaking all ties with the BJP if Modi was made the PM candidate could be his isolation within the NDA, with other allies like the Shiv Sena and Akali Dal welcoming the BJP’s decision on elevating Modi.

But then these are all speculations, and certainly the last word on the Modi-Nitish war of words has not been spoken yet.  And as JD(U)’s Rajya Sabha member KC Tyagi told reporters, the party had given BJP time till the end of this year to clarify its choice of the NDA’s PM nominee.