After Nitish: What his exit means for Bihar politics
As the long-time fulcrum of Bihar politics moves to Delhi, ally BJP will eye the caste coalition he crafted in the state.
Carving out a “Vikas Purush image Nitish Kumar's terms as CM have, to a great extent, reversed the negative stereotypes surrounding Bihar. For long, Bihar politics has revolved around a clash between the greens (socialists) and the saffron (BJP) camp, and the intertwining of the two. With Nitish Kumar in control of state politics, the socialists continued to remain on top even though the BJP won more seats in the last two Assembly elections. Bihar, as a result, remained a frontier of sorts for the BJP, a state it had been unable to win on its own. But with Nitish set to step aside as CM and move to the Rajya Sabha, it is now likely to change as the BJP is expected to take over, slowly and steadily.
In terms of optics, with Nitish in Delhi, Bihar politics will appear somewhat bipolar: the BJP versus the RJD. The JD(U) will have to prove that it can still be a major player by retaining Nitish’s social base comprising the Kurmis and a clutch of Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs). But that proof will come only in the next elections. Till then, a sense of bipolarity is expected, though the RJD’s poor performance last time suggests that the BJP may have the edge to begin with.
Though the JD(U) has 85 MLAs and 12 Lok Sabha MPs — by no means a small number — it will have to work hard to hold on to Nitish’s meticulously cultivated constituency — a large component of EBCs (about 25%), almost the entire block of OBC Luv-Kush (Kurmi-Koeri, who comprise over 7% of the population), and the overwhelming caste-neutral group of women voters — that was played a key role in propelling the NDA alliance to a win the last two elections. In cultivating the EBCs, Nitish achieved another thing. While the EBCs across north and central India shifted significantly to the BJP under Narendra Modi — with the exception of UP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls — the Bihar CM still held the key to them in Bihar.
The JD(U) has to hold on to its core support base amid the BJP’s likely attempts to expand its footprint and acquire it. The previous equation in the state that saw the CM being a decisive factor in government formation, even if his JD(U) was not the dominant force, may get disrupted in the future.
The JD(U) also has no strong, pan-Bihar leader to inspire the party rank and file. The party may expect to have the backing of its core Luv-Kush constituency, but without a strong face to rally behind, its EBC and women’s votes are at risk of disintegrating over time. While the party has second-rung leaders such as Shrawan Kumar, Ashok Choudhary, and Vijay Kumar Choudhary, there is no one who can emerge as a consensus leader. Under such circumstances, Nitish’s son Nishant appears to be the JD(U)’s best bet. Nitish is the only regional politician in the country who, for a long time, did not promote his son in politics. But now that Nishant is being promoted and is expected to find space in the new government, many wonder whether it’s too late.
Nishant’s strength as well as limitation is that he is Nitish Kumar’s son. “He has to evolve as a leader fast. He has seen his father’s politics from close quarters. He just needs to move around Bihar; he would have both people’s support and blessings because of his father’s rich political legacy,” said a source close to Nishant.
Implications for the BJP
For the BJP, this is nothing short of a victory, something it has been waiting for a long time. With 89 seats, it can expect a seamless journey with the JD(U) and other smaller allies over the next few years. Its real challenge will come post-2030 and it needs to put in place a strong leader.
Since the death of Sushil Modi, the BJP has not had a face in the state. It experimented with leaders such as Tarkishore Prasad and Renu Devi, both of whom were Deputy CMs, but they were more of temporary choices. It was only after 2024 that it found a somewhat strong leader in Samrat Choudhary, who comes from the OBC Kushwaha constituency.
“If the BJP goes for a weak CM, the party will weaken with time. PM Narendra Modi can help the party win a good number of Lok Sabha seats, but not the Assembly polls,” said asenior leader.
Nitish Kumar’s exit may also mean that the BJP could try to implement some of its pending Hindutva agenda. In doing so, whether it faces as much resistance as it did during Nitish’s tenure remains to be seen.
An idea that the Congress had pushed since the 1990s was that the ideological battle for the idea of India was between a secular vision that it stood for versus the “communal”, or Hindutva vision, of the BJP. Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi repeated this in recent years, too. However, Nitish — who broke away from the NDA in 2014 when Modi burst on the national stage, saying the Gujarat riots could not be forgotten — took the wind out of the sails of this idea by seamlessly shifting from the BJP-led alliance to the Opposition and back. If Nitish could cross over from one side to another and was eagerly brought on board by both sides, what was the “secular-communal” dichotomy in politics about?
The Opposition feels that the more the BJP tries to implement its Hindutva agenda, the more the state politics will turn bipolar. For now, the BJP has won Bihar; it has the task of holding on to it.
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