Bihar chief minister may now be targeting Delhi or as it seems that Nitish Kumar has a plan in his head. Severing his five-year old alliance with the BJP and walking over to the Mahagathbandhan camp, maybe signalling just that. Though there has been much talk about Nitish’s growing discomfort with an ‘overbearing’ BJP, the stark message to have emerged out of Nitish’s U-turn is his rekindled national ambition. Though he hasn’t spoken openly about his PM hopes and continues to talk about ‘serving’ Bihar, soon after taking oath as CM for the record eighth time. Nitish has urged all Opposition parties to start preparing for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. JD(U) sources hint he may soon start touring other States to explore the chances of a broader national coalition to take on BJP in the 2024 elections.
JD(U) national spokesperson K C Tyagi said, “We have been getting a very positive response (about Nitish Kumar walking out of NDA). Just the thought of Nitish Kumar playing an important role in national politics looks exciting. It is too early to say, but Nitish Kumar has recharged the Opposition.” Saying Mahagatbandhan, an alliance of seven parties that has the JD(U), RJD, and Congress, besides other parties could “offer a template for a national Opposition against the BJP”, another top JD(U) leader said, “Bihar has been the factory of political experiments and coalition. The BJP is now up against tough Opposition in Bihar. Who knows, there might be a strong Opposition at the national level too”? JD(U) sources point out that Nitish has nothing left to prove in State politics. He is credited with turning around Bihar’s fortunes after its long years of decay and for building a formidable social coalition built around women and extremely backward classes among OBCs. He is also the State’s longest-serving CM, having broken the record of 16 years held by Dr. Srikrishna Singh, Bihar’s first CM. As a close Nitish aide says now only posts of Deputy PM and PM are left to be achieved.
Nitish, who joined hands with the BJP in 1995, first quit the NDA in 2013, in the run-up to Lok Sabha elections, when it became clear that Narendra Modi would be the Prime Ministerial candidate. Though he did openly pitch himself for the post, he was uneasy about Modi’s growing profile. When he finally parted ways with the BJP in 2013, it was on the ground that the NDA should have a leader with a “clean and secular imagine”. Then in the run-up to the 2015 polls, Nitish did the unthinkable by joining hands with his old socialist fellow travellers and later foe, Lalu Prasad of RJD. In the elections that year, held two years after Nitish quit NDA, the coalition got 178 with the BJP reduced to 53 seats. Nitish had found his sweet revenge against Modi. Barely two years later, in 2017, he snapped ties with the RJD citing his no corruption plank as the CBI booked RJD leader and now his deputy CM, Tejaswi Yadav, in the IRCTC case. For someone who would often talk of fighting the ‘triple Cs’ of crime, corruption, and communalism as the guiding principles of his governance model, Nitish when asked if corruption was no longer an issue, didn’t bat an eyelid when he said Tejaswi by his side, “very much so. We cannot compromise on corruption”.
