DNA Exclusive: Time for Nitish Kumar to be decisive once again, but it’s not going to be easy this time

Allies since almost three decades, JD(U) and BJP have in the recent past squabbled on issues ranging from Agnipath recruitment, caste census, population law and ban on loudspeakers. Although JD(U) supported NDA candidates in presidential and vice-presidential polls, Nitish Kumar's absence at some important events and his decision to skip Sunday's NITI Aayog meet, have kept political pundits intrigued.

What seems to have pushed the BJP-JD(U) alliance to the brink of split is probably a build-up of over two years which started before the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections. Experts believe that one major reason behind this is Nitish Kumar’s long-pending dream of standing at the centrestage of the national politics. 

Kumar possibly fears that the BJP may “dump” his party after securing victory in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, and would go alone in the 2025 Assembly polls. The JD(U)’s bid to turn up the heat on the BJP now might be its pushback against that possibility. 

‘Unnatural’ alliance? 

For the BJP, accepting Kumar as the CM despite emerging as the second largest party in the 2020 Assembly polls must have been a tough decision to make. The reason was Kumar’s recognition in the state politics as someone who always spoke against corruption and even quit the alliance with RJD in 2017 to further cement his ‘no corruption’ plank. 

The BJP won 74 seats, but that was not enough to form a government on its own and without a prominent face, and eventually had to rely on Kumar and his party to remain in power in the politically crucial state. 

Also Read | DNA Exclusive: Once Nitish Kumar’s go-to man, RCP Singh now left out in the cold; what options is he left with?

Speaking to DNA India, political commentator Amitabh Tiwari opined: “Any party with double the seats in its kitty will have its say on how the government should run, it will have to show its authority at some place. You gave the CM post, and then the party with lesser number of seats wants to run the government its way, this is an unnatural type of relationship.”

In his current term as the CM, Nitish has enjoyed his usual primacy as he kept all party’s earlier portfolios. The saffron party, on its part, has been aggressively focusing on its organisational growth and its leaders, such as Ram Surat Rai, Samrat Choudhary, Haribhushan Thakur and even state president Sanjay Jaiswal.

With the BJP flexing its muscles in the state after winning more seats than the JD(U) and making attempts to move out of Kumar’s dependency to rule the state, Kumar seems to have been desperately looking for avenues.   

Will he, won’t he? 

As always, Kumar has kept everyone guessing over his next political summersault. But given his background, anything is possible! From being a vocal critic of Narendra Modi to turning his ally, Kumar has made stunning switches of power in the past. While ruling Bihar with the BJP, he quit the NDA and joined hands with the RJD. Then he deserted the RJD and went back to the NDA. 

Kumar has often talked of triple Cs (crime, corruption and communalism), and in these switches for power, he has often chosen between two Cs -- corruption and communalism. This time, he is expected to choose his 2013 card of communalism. 

Notably, when walking out of the NDA in 2013 after it became clear that Narendra Modi would be the NDA’s PM face in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Nitish had given a call for “Sangh-mukt Bharat”. Nitish had also gone on to declare that “mitti mein mil jayenge, BJP ke saath wapas nahi jayenge (I would prefer to be reduced to dust rather than going back to BJP)”.

What about Nitish Kumar’s anti-corruption plank?

After moving out of the alliance with the RJD in 2017, Kumar is now purportedly mulling realignment with Lalu Yadav’s party when the stains of corruption against RJD supremo have only deepened. 

Yadav now stands convicted in five fodder scams, with four of them coming in the last five years. He has spent most of these years in jail before getting bail last year. There has been little progress in the cases lodged against Tejashwi Yadav that the RJD says were a result of “political vendetta unleashed through agencies”. 

Will realignment with RJD be the right move?

Whether Kumar’s decision to go back to his friends-turned-foe-turned-friends-turned-foe will be right or not can be understood from the political arithmetic of Bihar. 

If Kumar is anywhere eyeing the national politics, a Mahagathbandhan that includes JD(U), RJD and Congress can fulfill his requirements of social engineering, Hindutva, nationalism and calculations combined. 

The RJD’s remark that it ready to embrace Kumar if the latter decides to ditch the BJP seems to an affirmation on accepting the JD(U) chief as the chief minister, in case a new government is formed. 

Speaking to DNA India, RJD spokesperson Chitranjan Gagan said that while the NDA was still in power and that his party had nothing to do with the ongoing face-off between the ruling alliance partners, he did not rule out the possibility of JD(U) stitching an alliance with the RJD-led grand alliance. 

Experts believe that Kumar’s development card could help dilute the taint of corruption charges against the RJD. That the RJD hold has not slackened on account of the same was evident in the last Assembly polls when, despite the absence of Lalu Prasad, it emerged as the single-largest party.

The JD(U), on its part, remains hopeful that if the alliance with the Mahagathbandhan does well in 2024, Nitish could emerge as a nucleus of the anti-BJP opposition, which currently lacks credible faces, prominent enough to compete Modi’s charisma. 

The only obstacles in his path could then be West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, who has her own national ambitions but will be unacceptable to the Left and the Congress as well. 

Nitish left with these options

The one option which is foreseen by most of us is that of Nitish Kumar going back to the RJD and Congress, but things have changed a lot since 2015-17. Given the manner in which he switched to the NDA in 2017, there is a major truth deficit among the Mahagathbandhan constituents towards Kumar. 

The JD(U) is a much weaker party than it was in 2017. It had 71 seats then, it has just 45 now. On the other hand, the RJD has become stronger and now stands at 80 seats. Also, the anti-incumbency Kumar is stronger than ever before. 

Another option is that the BJP somehow manages to placate Kumar with more concessions, given the fact that Bihar will play a crucial role in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. In the 2019 parliamentary elections, the alliance had won 39 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar. 

Experts believe that upsetting Kumar at the present moment would mean pushing him towards the Mahagathbandhan. The RJD's Muslim-Yadav base, JD(U)'s support among Kurmis, MBCs and Mahadalits and the pockets of influence of Congress and CPI-ML, make it a formidable alliance, one that could inflict losses on the NDA.