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Journalism of Courage
When the JD(U) was relegated to number three position in the 2020 Assembly elections with 43 seats, behind the RJD’s 75 seats and the BJP’s 74, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had said he wouldn’t lead the coalition government and that ally BJP should make someone else the CM. Many saw his statement for what it was – clever political posturing, a signature Nitish Kumar move considering he was well aware of his indispensability in the state. He, of course, went on to be CM for a record seventh term.
Barely three years later, as he goes all out to bring as many non-BJP parties as he possibly can under the same roof – the first official meeting of Opposition parties takes place in Patna on June 12 – it’s a different Nitish and the circumstances vastly different. For one, he is now in the Mahagathbandhan camp and, though he has continued to keep his chair – largely through political acumen and some deft manoeuvring – he is well aware that the slide he and his party have witnessed since the high of the 2010 Assembly polls may be largely irreversible.
Over the last few months, Nitish has been relentlessly working on building a non-BJP Opposition platform. In a camp with competing pulls and pressures, Nitish has, ahead of the 2024 polls, arguably succeeded in bringing about a semblance of Opposition unity, something that hasn’t happened before the last two Lok Sabha elections.
While the JD(U)’s presence has made it easier for parties such as the Trinamool Congress and the AAP to sit together at the same table as the Congress, Nitish has also reached out to Orissa CM and BJD leader Naveen Patnaik. Though Patnaik has ruled out being part of any Opposition front, Nitish’s close aide and JD(U) chief spokesperson K C Tyagi had earlier said, “Navin Patnaik, KCR and YS Jagan Mohan Reddy are work in progress. So long as they are opposed to the BJP, we can hope that Nitish Kumar’s Mission 2024 of a mega Opposition unity is going to work.”
As he goes about his new task, it’s also a different Nitish at work. He is not the grouchy man that occupies the CM seat, weighed down by the pulls and pressures of running a coalition at a time when he is a shrunken version of himself. Instead, he looks relaxed, willing to concede, ready to lead, secure in the awareness that he could just be the glue the Opposition needed.
JD(U) spokesperson Neeraj Kumar said, “He had to take the lead and rekindle the Opposition hopes of taking on a strong BJP. Nitish Kumar had tried to do this before 2017 as well, but the Congress didn’t back him then. Now things are going in the right direction”.
The slide
With 118 seats, the JD(U) was the leading party in the 2010 election, ahead of then ally BJP’s 91 seats; by the next election, in 2015, the tide had changed, with the JD(U) pushed to the No 2 slot with 71 seats, behind ally RJD’s 80 seats.
While it was the 2020 Assembly polls that sounded the alarm and underlined Nitish’s shrinking stock in the state, the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the 2015 election too came with signals.
In the three-cornered 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the JD(U), contesting on its own after parting ways with the BJP in 2013, was reduced to two seats from the 20 it won in 2009, when it fought in alliance with the BJP.
Following the state elections in 2015, by which time he had switched over to the Mahagathbandhan camp, while Nitish continued to remain CM, it was clear that Lalu Prasad was a stronger force than Nitish in the event of their votes converging.
While RJD continues to bank on its trusted Muslim-Yadav (MY) base, it has also carefully worked over the last few years to bring several Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) under its fold. In comparison, Nitish Kumar’s votebase of Mahadalits (Scheduled Castes), EBCs and Koeri-Kurmis has been displaying cracks, as was reflected in the last two Assembly bypolls – in Gopalganj (which the BJP retained) and Mokama (won by the RJD).
Though Nitish has worked on keeping his Deputy CM Tejashwi in good humour – at a Nalanda function last year, he said Tejashwi would lead the 2025 Assembly poll campaign – he knows the young RJD leader is impatient to take over. Tejashwi has led his alliance to win 110 seats (the RJD won 75), only 12 short of a simple majority, in the last Assembly polls. For now, however, with central agencies closing in on Lalu Prasad’s family, including Tejashwi, over the land-for-jobs and IRCTC cases, the RJD leader has mellowed down. And with Nitish Kumar getting a key role in national politics, Tejashwi now seems to have reconciled to wait and watch than give the BJP any political advantage.
But that leaves Nitish with a very small window within which he has to carve out a niche for himself.
The next test
Nitish’s next big test is the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Though the seven-party alliance government that he leads is good on paper to showcase Opposition unity, their unity will be tested when it comes to seat-sharing ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
Of Bihar’s 40 Lok Sabha seats, the JD(U) and RJD would look to contest 13-15 seats each, leaving the rest for the Congress, CPM, CPI, CPI (ML-Liberation) and Hindustani Awam Morcha-Secular. Nitish knows that even if the JD(U) wins 12-13 seats at best, it is not good enough for him to stake a claim at the national level.
Meanwhile, the BJP has been trying hard to forge an alliance that can match the Mahagathbandhan in terms of social base and arithmetic. The BJP looks set to rope in smaller players such as the LJP (Ramvilas) led by Chirag Paswan, Rashtriya Lok Janata Dal led by former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha and Vikassheel Insaan Party led by former Bihar minister and EBC Mallah leader Mukesh Sahani.
With BJP making OBC Kushwaha leader Samrat Choudhary its Bihar unit president, the JD(U) has been somewhat jittery over a split in Nitish’s core constituency of Koeri (Kushwaha)-Kurmi or Luv-Kush voters. Plus, party sources fear, a string of measures taken by the government — including discontinuing the Central post-matric scholarship and other state schemes for Dalits — may have distanced the Scheduled Caste voters away from the JD(U).
If the seven parties that are part of the Mahagathbandhan have to come together for the 2024 polls, both Lalu and Nitish will need a bigger aura than they currently do. It’s here that Nitish’s national role – as the glue that will potentially bind disparate Opposition parties – is expected to come in handy and give the JD(U) more bargaining power in the state ahead of 2024, the party hopes. Party sources say he may set an example by ceding ground to smaller parties in Bihar and thus put pressure on the Congress and other parties to “replicate the Bihar model” at the Centre.
For now, the JD(U), faced with a series of setbacks, including the court’s stay on the caste census, has to contend with a BJP that is banking on PM Modi’s personality and the Centre’s labharthi schemes, besides its core Hindutva agenda. The 2024 polls will prove to be a litmus test, more for Nitish than for Lalu or Tejashwi.
The final push
If the JD(U) fails to cross the two-digit mark in the next Lok Sabha polls, Nitish Kumar could lose his political relevance for the 2025 Assembly polls.
It is a desperate situation for a man who harbourbed hopes of being the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate after leading the NDA to win 206 of 243 seats in Bihar in the 2010 state elections. Two years later, in an oblique reference to the possible projection of then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi as the PM nominee for the 2014 polls, he said the PM candidate should have a “clean and secular” image.
Nitish probably realises that he ended up frittering away his chance of becoming the nucleus of an anti-Narendra Modi front in 2014 (he contested the elections alone) and 2019 (when he was back with the NDA). And that now could be his big chance.
After all, he has little to lose. If the anti-BJP front works, he will end up as a key national leader, if not a hero — his Deve Gowda or I K Gujral moment in the event of a muddled political situation. If he fails, he can take solace from the fact that he at least tried. And if the man who has made a dizzying number of U-turns ends up taking another one, there will be no surprises.
