At least on three occasions during the Budget Session that concluded on Friday, the Bihar Assembly watched as Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council Rabri Devi took on each other. On Tuesday, while speaking in the Upper House of which he too is a member, the JD(U) supremo appeared to dismiss the RJD leader's track record, which includes being the state’s third longest serving CM, from 1997 to 2005. “Iska kuchh hai, toh woh iske husband ka tha. Usi ne isko CM bana diya (Whatever Rabri Devi claims as her own, was her husband and former CM Lalu Prasad's. It was Lalu who made her the CM),” Nitish said. Rabri replied that the statement was not only disrespectful to her, but showed that Nitish had no respect for women in general. This jibe was meant to hurt as the JD(U) chief has built a devoted vote bank of women supporters due to his schemes. It wasn’t Nitish’s first attack on Rabri of late. During an RJD protest in the Legislative Council earlier this week, which Nitish called a “spectacle”, when Rabri rose to defend her party, the CM snubbed her, saying, “Stay out of this. The party is not yours but that of your husband.” He added, “This poor lady was propped up by her husband when he was in trouble.” If it was Rabri who took on Nitish in the Legislative Council, in recent years, RJD leader and her son Tejashwi Yadav has been taking him on in the Assembly. On Monday, he peppered his speech in the House with facts and figures on the social welfare initiatives undertaken when his parents Lalu and Rabri helmed the government respectively. This was to counter the JD(U) and Nitish’s frequent poser: “2005 ke pehle Bihar me kuchh tha? (Was there anything in Bihar before 2005?)” On Wednesday, coming to Rabri’s defence, Tejashwi said in a social media post: “Bihar, the birthplace of Sita, has a CM who uses derogatory language towards women, which is unfortunate for the state. Rabri Devi is an iconic figure in Bihar’s women’s empowerment movement. She inspires hope, trust, and enthusiasm in every woman in Bihar, proving that women are equally powerful and capable of fighting injustice, taking care of their families, and contributing to the state’s prosperity.” While Nitish was known for silencing his critics with sharp arguments backed by facts and figures once, his detractors say the CM now is riding more on his seniority and past achievements. “We do not remember when CM Nitish Kumar or any other NDA leader made any impressive speeches in the Assembly in the last four years,” said Subodh Kumar Mehta, the RJD national spokesperson. Senior JD(U) minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary, however, said: “Nitish Kumar has an illustrious career. Neither does he need a certificate on patriotism (referring to the controversy over him talking during singing of the national anthem recently), nor does he need an endorsement of his development credentials.” Since the beginning of his first stint as the Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly in 2017, on the other hand, Tejashwi has led from the front in taking on Nitish – that is when he has been on the other side. Lalu, much praised for his oratory, has been appreciative of his son’s skills. During his second stint as the LoP, Tejashwi had presented crime data comparing the RJD’s rule and the NDA’s. Citing the National Crime Records Bureau’s findings that the number of murder cases, often linked to business rivalries and property disputes, had increased since 2005 – the year Nitish became the CM – Tejashwi attempted to counter the “jungle raj” label that the JD(U) frequently attaches to the RJD’s tenures in power. On one occasion in 2021, Tejashwi accused Nitish of “plagiarism” in a government report. The RJD leader further attacked the CM over an electoral violence dating back to the 1990s, in which Nitish had been named though the Patna High Court had later stayed proceedings. At this point, Nitish lost his cool and told Tejashwi: “Just keep quiet. I am not saying much because you are the son of my brother-like friend.”
