Not averse to risks, Nitish Kumar checks in at another roundabout

The political roads of Nitish and Lalu Prasad, both of whom emerged from the JP movement, have often met at the same crossing. They have played both friends and bitter rivals. Thanks to his alliance with the BJP, Nitish had a dream run, first at the Centre for six years and then in Bihar, from 2005.

4 min readNew DelhiJul 27, 2017 01:28 PM IST First published on: Jul 27, 2017 at 02:10 AM IST

nitish kumar, nitish kumar resign, nitish kumar resignation, maha gatbandhan, bihar cm resign, bihar politics, lalu prasad yadav, tejaswi yadav, indian express news, india news

Nitish Kumar resigned as Bihar chief minister on Wednesday. He’s set to resume charge today. (PTI/File photo)

Politicians acquire a survival skill as they move along in their career. Not so for Nitish Kumar. The man who quit as the Bihar chief minister on Wednesday, and in all likelihood, will be back as the chief minister soon, has mastered the art of political maneuvering and taking risks — mostly successful but at times at a loss.

The political roads of Nitish and Lalu Prasad, both of whom emerged from the JP movement, have often met at the same crossing. They have played both friends and bitter rivals. In the early nineties, then Prime Minister V P Singh had propped them up in the Janata Dal to counter three party colleagues: Ram Vilas Paswan in Bihar and Sharad Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav, as leaders of the Yadav community in Bihar and UP, respectively.

In 1990, when the party came to power in Bihar, Lalu became the CM. Singh inducted Nitish into his government as a minister of state. He parted company with Lalu in 1994 and formed Samata Party with George Fernandes. It proved to be a misadventure. In 1995 Assembly polls, the party won seven seats. Lalu won big, bagging 167 of 324 seats.

Nitish and Fernandes then turned to BJP. In 1996, at a time when the BJP was a pariah for most political parties in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition, Samata Party aligned with it. The Lok Sabha election saw Samata Party win eight seats: six in Bihar, and one each in UP and Odisha.

In 1998 General Election, the party’s strength went up to 12. Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s successive stints as Prime Minister between 1998 and 2004, and the consequent ministerial berth for himself, enabled Nitish to enhance his stature. He was offered the post of Bihar CM in 2000. His tenure lasted only seven days, but it established his supremacy as NDA’s leader in Bihar.

Thanks to his alliance with the BJP, Nitish had a dream run, first at the Centre for six years and then in Bihar, from 2005. He and Fernandes joined hands with some former colleagues and formed the JD(U) in 2003. In 2005, he became the CM as leader of NDA in Bihar.

In 2007, Nitish dumped Fernandes and joined hands with Sharad Yadav to plot his removal as party president. Fernandes’s fragile health was seen as having worsened thereafter, and he gradually disappeared from public life. Sharad Yadav became party president with Nitish’s support.

Having shared power with BJP even during the 2002 Gujarat communal violence, Nitish decided to turn a new leaf and broke away from NDA on the plank of secularism in 2013, the provocation being the emergence of Narendra Modi as BJP’s Prime Minister candidate. The move misfired.

In the 2014 polls, JD(U) won two seats. He promptly resigned as CM, owning moral responsibility for the rout, and made Jitan Ram Manjhi the chief minister. This move also went bust, as Manjhi turned a rebel. A few months later, he wanted the job back. In 2015, Nitish was back in power — after a bitter break-up with Manjhi. Nitish, Lalu and the Congress came together to fight 2015 polls as a secular grand alliance.