Beginning of End of Nitish Kumar Era Reveals in Bihar
Bihar CM Nitish Kumar with BJP chief J P Nadda in Patna (Image credit X.com)
BJP Asserts in Bihar NDA while Son-stricken CM Makes Concessions
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, February 27: While Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar unveiled ₹50k crore worth of project/scheme promises in last one week, questions hang low in Patna on him holding his office after the October Assembly elections.
The Bihar Chief Minister for all practical purposes has accorded the status of seniority to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Against 13 ministers of the Janata Dal (United), the BJP now has 21 ministers in the state Cabinet.
The BJP and the JD (U) had been almost equal partners in the Bihar unit of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) until the Lok Sabha elections. But the outcome of the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections had dented Nitish Kumar’s chips with the BJP.
Nishant Kumar, son of the Bihar Chief Minister, is all set to join the JD (U) within the next few weeks. He will mark the arrival of another dynast in Indian politics. The JD (U) insiders stated that the Chief Minister’s concessions to the BJP is linked to unveiling of his son in the Bihar politics.
Unblike other regional satraps, Nitish Kumar held Bihar’s former Chief Minister Karpoori Thakur in high esteem. The Chief Minister often stated in his speeches that Thakur left not even a home for his family when he passed away.
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But the Bihar Chief Minister showed his weakness to care for family members by sending Karpoori Thakur’s son – Ram Nath Thakur — to the Rajya Sabha. “Nishant Kumar finally has to take the position of his father. The time has come for him to join active politics,” said a senior JD (U) functionary.
Nishant Kumar has refuted speculations on health conditions of his father. He told reporters in Bihar that his father is in a good shape for another five years in the Chief Minister’s post.
But political observers in Patna are not convinced with the argument. The Maharashtra political script, they argue, is most likely to find a Bihar adaptation. The JD (U) is weakening while the BJP gains strength in Bihar.
In 2020 Bihar Assembly elections, the BJP won 74 Assembly seats against 43 of the JD (U). The BJP, however, found strength of Brand Nitish Kumar in the Lok Sabha elections in 20204.
Both the parties won 12 Lok Sabha seats each. But the BJP lost five Lok Sabha seats against just four of the JD (U) in comparison to 2019. Also, the JD (U) vote share was just about two per cent lesser than the BJP at 18.52 per cent.
Helming the affairs of Bihar since 2005 with brief stay away from CM post, Nitish Kumar, 73, appears now more worried about future of his party than asserting his might against the BJP. His sherpas in Delhi – Sanjay Kumar Jha, working president of the (JDU), and Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lallan Singh, Union Minister, — have crafted sharp pro-BJP images in the last six months.
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