Former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi on Friday claimed that poll strategist Prashant Kishor had met her husband Lalu Prasad with a proposal for the merger of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and that the new entity thus formed should declare its “prime ministerial candidate” ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

“I got infuriated and asked him to go away as I had no trust left in Chief Minister Nitish Kumar following his betrayal,” the RJD national vice-president told a regional news channel here.

Mr. Kumar had in 2017 walked out of the Grand Alliance of the JD(U), RJD and Congress in Bihar, and re-joined the BJP-led NDA.

“All our staff and security personnel deployed here are witnesses. He called on us at least five times, mostly here (her 10, Circular Road residence), and one or two times at paanch number (5, Deshratna Marg — the bungalow allotted to her younger son and Leader of the Opposition Tejashwi Yadav),” Ms. Rabri Devi said.

“Kishor was sent by Nitish Kumar with the proposal — ‘let us merge both parties and declare a prime ministerial candidate’,” she asserted.

Ms. Rabri Devi’s revelations come close on heels of Mr. Prasad’s claims in his recently-published autobiography, that Mr. Kishor had met him as an Mr. Kumar’s emissary with the proposal that the JD(U) be re-inducted into the Grand Alliance.

The poll strategist who became a full-time member of the JD(U) in September last year, admitted on Twitter that he had met Mr Prasad “many times” before joining the party, but added, “If I were to tell what all was discussed, he (Lalu) would be quite embarrassed”.