Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday sprang a surprise when he drove down to a Patna hotel to meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who is in the state for fine-tuning the BJP's strategy for the upcoming assembly polls.
Photographs of the Janata Dal-United supremo offering a bouquet of flowers to Shah, a former BJP president, were shared by the two leaders on their respective X handles.
Sources in both parties refused to say anything on record, though speaking on condition of anonymity they said it was "a courtesy call".
They, however, noted with satisfaction that the gesture from 75-year-old Kumar would put paid to speculations, in a section of the media, over his "refusal" to meet Union minister and BJP chief Jagat Prakash Nadda, who was in the city last week.
Elections are likely to be announced in the state in a few weeks from now, and Kumar, the longest-serving CM of the state, is aiming at a fifth consecutive term in office.
Kumar's meeting with Shah, arguably the second most powerful man in the BJP and still considered the party's principal strategist, came barely three days after the JD-U president had assured Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at a rally in Purnea district, that he was back in the NDA for good, blaming his past dalliances with the Congress-RJD combine on advice of JD-U colleagues.
Meanwhile, shortly after the tete-o-tete with the alliance partner, Shah left for Dehri-on-Sone to hold talks with party workers and leaders of 10 districts of the Magadh-Shahabad region, where the performance of the NDA was below par in the 2020 assembly polls and Lok Sabha elections last year.
Shah was expected to wind up the tour with a visit to Begusarai, the Lok Sabha constituency of Union minister Giriraj Singh, for holding similar deliberations with party functionaries from Munger and Patna divisions.