Upendra Kushwaha the Union Minister on Wednesday hinted that the top post in Bihar may soon fall vacant and a new candidate will be required.

The union minister said, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has reached a “saturation point in power and wants to step down”. He clarified later that this doesn’t mean that i am asking for the resignation of the 67-year-old Chief Minister.

Kushwaha said no one knows Nitish Kumar better than him, addressing his party workers in Patna. During one of their interactions, Nitish Kumar had told him that after being in power for 15 years, he doesn’t want to continue any longer, Kushwaha added.

“I am neither doing any politics nor I am making any satirical comment on the CM, but he (Nitish Kumar) has himself expressed his desire not to continue beyond 2020. I have ruled for 15 years. How long will I be the CM,” Kushwaha quoted the CM as saying at a party event organized in Patna to mark Sardar Patel’s birth anniversary.

However, the spokesperson of JD(U) Neeraj Kumar pushed aside Kushwaha’s alegations and said Nitish Kumar is Chief Minister by “virtue of people’s mandate and legislators’ choice”.

The statement on Kushwaha was seen as the last pressing attempt by the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) to bargain for more Lok Sabha seats in the state than what it had got during 2014 general elections.

Kumar and Kushwaha are allies of BJP in Bihar, and their bonding has reached a new low as things became clear that Nitish Kumar would get as many seats as the BJP.

BJP president Amit Shah announced final seat-sharing formula last week and asked all allies to make sacrifices to fit in a new partner, Kushwaha had said: “I respect his statement. We are ready for sacrifice. (But) all partners should share all benefits and losses. I understand that the alliance with the JD(U) has benefited the NDA. Then why can’t we share the benefits in Bihar?…Partnership should be equal in profit as well as loss.”

Kushwaha met the opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav and created a controversy and later said the meet was nonpolitical.