NDA will win 'more than 4,000 seats': Nitish's faux pas

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was on Sunday trolled on social media for predicting that the National Democratic Alliance will win "more than 4,000 seats", several times the sanctioned strength of Lok Sabha.

Kumar, who heads the Janata Dal-United and returned to the BJP-led coalition less than three months ago, made the faux pas at a rally in Nawada district where he spoke before Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In a portion of his speech that has gone viral, Kumar can be heard fumbling "char lakh (four lakh)", before correcting himself and uttering "char hazaar se bhi zyada (more than 4,000)", while turning towards the PM whom he has been wishing a "400 plus tally" in the elections.

Predictably, many RJD leaders, including its spokesperson Sarika Paswan, shared the video of Kumar who had lambasted the party's president Lalu Prasad and the latter's wife Rabri Devi for their alleged dismal performance as chief ministers of Bihar.

"The chief minister wanted to wish more than four lakh MPs to the PM. Then he probably thought it would be too much and 4,000 would be sufficient," Paswan wrote on X in a post in Hindi.

On the wrong side of 70, Kumar, the longest-serving chief minister of Bihar, has been in the news for slips of the tongue on a few occasions.

His earlier reference to himself as a former union home minister was ridiculed by the BJP, which was then in the opposition and had alleged that the veteran leader was betraying senility.

Meanwhile, JD-U leaders declined to comment on the Nawada episode.