NEW DELHI: Ahead of next month’s Bihar assembly elections, the ruling Janata Dal (United) re-inducted Arun Kumar, a former party leader who had previously threatened to inflict “physical harm” on chief minister and JD(U) national president Nitish Kumar.Kumar, who held the Jehanabad Lok Sabha seat twice, re-joined the party along with several of his supporters. Addressing the occasion, Union minister and senior JD(U) leader Rajiv Ranjan “Lalan” Singh said Kumar would bring a “toofan” (storm) in the Magadh region.

The 66-year-old leader’s return marks his third stint in the Nitish Kumar-led outfit, which is part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Bihar along with the BJP, Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), and Hindustani Awam Morcha.Arun Kumar, known as a “temperamental” leader, had previously made headlines when he vowed to “break the ribs” of Nitish Kumar after quitting JD(U), PTI reported. He represented the Jehanabad seat in the Lok Sabha from 1999–2004 for the JD(U) and from 2014–2019 for the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party. Arun Kumar briefly floated his own outfit, the Bharatiya Sab Log Party, which failed to make an impact in the 2020 Bihar assembly elections and the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.His re-induction is seen as an attempt to neutralise the impact of another upper-caste Bhumihar leader, Rahul Sharma, from Jehanabad, who recently defected to the RJD, the principal party of the opposition Mahagathbandhan alliance. Sharma, a former JD(U) MLA from Ghosi, joined the RJD on Friday in the presence of former Bihar deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav, the Mahagathbandhan’s prospective chief ministerial candidate.The upcoming Bihar elections will feature a straight fight between the NDA and Mahagathbandhan, with voting scheduled for November 6 and 11 and counting on November 14.