Chirag Paswan has played a political game in Bihar that has managed to bring Nitish Kumar and his party to third place in the northern state. An analysis shows that Chirag Paswan did not oppose Nitish Kumar wholeheartedly. The 69-year-old has a burning ambition for a fourth term as the chief minister will not rely so much on the promises made by his ally BJP.
When publishing this report, the BJP had the largest number of seats in the state. The runner-up honor is with his main rival Tejashwi Yadav. And in third place was Nitish Kumar's party, a ghostly shadow of his first self.
According to an NDTV report, Nitish Kumar's could have been the single-largest party if every candidate had not had to contend with an opponent from Chirag Paswan's LJP.
"The BJP seems to have achieved its goal of reducing Nitish Kumar to junior partner - which was the goal of the Chirag Paswan move," said Pavan Varma, who was a close aide of Nitish Kumar till he was expelled from their party ten months ago.
This is the viewpoint of many political experts and critics of the BJP - that it used Chirag Paswan as its ally to eat at the ground of its partner, another ally Nitish Kumar. With Chirag Paswan serving as a vote-cutter, the BJP benefits from its first-ever happy mixing with Nitish Kumar and a larger role that is not always a happy mix. This has eclipsed the man who had sworn for years that he would have nothing to do with Narendra Modi, who was then the Chief Minister of Gujarat.
In 2010, Nitish Kumar canceled dinner in Patna to avoid getting into an affair with Narendra Modi. Today, if he has a chance to become the Chief Minister, it is due to the unstoppable personal appeal of the BJP and the Prime Minister, which have combined to take maximum seats in Bihar.
