Modi govt 3.0: Deft caste balancing in JD(U) choice of ministers Lalan Singh, Ramnath Thakur

The choice of the two ministers reflects deft caste balancing by Nitish Kumar who will be facing Assembly elections in the state in a year’s time.

While Singh, a Bhumihar is seen as representing the upper caste, the choice of Ram Nath Thakur is expected to please the state’s extremely backward castes (EBC). His father, Karpoori Thakur, who was conferred the Bharat Ratna recently by the government, is regarded the pioneer of OBC and EBC reservations in the country.

The choice also flags the efforts made by Nitish Kumar in conducting the caste survey in Bihar which found the EBCs to be the largest social group in the state.

Lalan Singh, 69, has been a close aide of JD(U) chief and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. He was also the former president of JD(U) and had recently seemed to have failed out with Nitish because of his alleged proximity to RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav.

Janata Dal (United), which won 12 Lok Sabha seats, has emerged a key ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the new NDA government.

In the just concluded general elections to 18th Lok Sabha, Singh defeated RJD’s Kumari Anita by a margin of 80,870 votes in the Munger parliamentary constituency.

“Ramnath Thakur was one obvious choice for a ministerial position. Karpoori Thakur is not just a matter of symbolism for us, Nitish Kumar has drawn a lot from Karpoori Thakur’s ideology and governance methods. Ramnath Thakur becoming minister helps us play up the Karpoori symbolism. It will send a great message to the Extremely Backward Class (EBC) community of Bihar,” said a senior JD(U) leader.

The 73-year-old Ramnath Thakur has been preferred over other ENC leaders such as Rampreet Mandal, the Jhanjharpur MP, and Dileshwar Kamat who is the MP from Supaul.

Thakur, who hails from Samastipur, has also served as Bihar minister between 2005 and 2010. He started his political career in 1970, assisting his father, but did not join electoral politics because Karpoori never wanted to promote his son in politics. Months after Karpoori’s death in February 1988, Ramnath took the plunge into electoral politics and was elected MLA. He was nominated to the Upper House of Bihar legislature in 1994. Thakur successfully contested the Assembly elections in 2000, February 2005 and then again in October 2005 from Samastipur and went on to serve as the land and revenue minister. Ramnath, however, lost the 2010 Assembly polls by a narrow margin in an election in which the Nitish-led NDA won 206 of Bihar’s 243 Assembly seats.

In his last interview to The Indian Express, Ramnath Thakur said, “What I am today is because of my father and what I could get in future is always because of my father.” Thakur also said that while he was the “biological son” of Karpoori Thakur, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar was the stalwart leader’s “manas putra”.