Nitish Kumar separated again from BJP on August 9th, 2022 earning the name ‘Paltu Ram’ of Bihar. This is going to be his greatest blunder which will accelerate his political downfall. I am deliberately using the word “accelerate” as his popularity was already diminishing in Bihar and his latest move would drag him and his party towards the end much faster. JDU came down from 71 seats in 2015 to 43 in 2020. In the next assembly elections, it is believed that they will go further down as the focus of the voter will now be on BJP and RJD. Nitish and his party will be pushed to the sidelines as a sundry entity.
What could have been running in Nitish’s mind? There are talks that he wanted be the Vice President. Some say, he was worried that BJP will further eat into his seats based on their rise from 53 seats in 2015 assembly elections to 72 in 2020 and destroy his party eventually. Nitish Kumar and JDU are anyways going to reduce to a political minority even if they go to elections in 2025 with RJD, as people are no more going to see them as important players that will impact their livelihood.
RJD will also be their big brother like BJP was, albeit a corrupt one given Lalu’s legacy. Some again say that Nitish has aspirations to become the next Prime Minister. He may have a non-corrupt image but he doesn’t enjoy any support outside of Bihar. He falls terribly short on the public connect skills that Narendra Modi has. Interestingly, on the day of RJD and JDU oath ceremony, RJD karyakarthas started touting that their leader Tejaswi will be a great Prime Minister. Then where does it leave Nitish?
Another hypothesis that can be thought about is that there is an agreement between Nitish and Tejaswi that Nitish can continue to rule Bihar comfortably while he supports Tejaswi as the next PM candidate. Sounds far-fetched but these parties can go to any ludicrous extent with their whims. Even the firebrand Mamata Banerjee had to mellow down in front of Modi. Coming back to Nitish Kumar, RJD has also made him the Chief Minister as only three years are left for next Assembly elections and they can conveniently make him the scapegoat for any performance issues and dump him if they get majority on their own. Tejaswi is shrewd and one has to give it to him.
Nitish should have stayed with BJP as it is the growing force in Bihar. He should try to strengthen his party using his clean image, by doing great work and connecting with people. He should have taken advantage of BJP not having their own strong leader on the ground. That way, he could have continued as a strong force in Bihar. Why in whole world, would he go with a party that he himself linked with jungle raj earlier and that has kind of been static with 80 seats in 2015 assembly elections and 75 seats in 2020? He should not have let his credibility take a hit in the eyes of the public just to quell his insecurity with BJP.
BJP will be benefitting the most out of this disastrous move by Nitish Kumar. They can now freely target Nitish’s government on performance issues. I believe they were not as shocked with this as they were with Uddhav Thackeray in Maharashtra when he suddenly joined Maha Vikas Aghadi. I am sure they would have seen this coming.
The only thing that they have to do is to develop a strong local face in the run up to 2025 Assembly elections. They will position themselves as the party that upheld the dharma with their ally Nitish even though they had much more seats but Nitish backstabbed them due to his pure personal ambitions. They have always thought for welfare of the state whereas Nitish always thought about his welfare. They will ask public to give them a chance to independently serve them with their double engine Sarkar citing the example of UP, as they have already seen what Nitish and RJD had to offer them. This will be a very persuasive argument that will make Bihar voters think, given the strong Modi factor playing in the back of their minds. You never know, an Eknath Shinde might emerge from JDU too.
In a nutshell, Nitish Kumar has lots to lose now. As it’s said in the corporate world, this is a career limiting move that he made. I don’t see him continuing as the Chief Minister post 2025 as that will be taken by either the RJD or the BJP. The million dollar question is – With chances of him becoming the Prime Minister in 2024 looking very bleak, what will happen to Nitish Kumar’s political career after three years? Let’s wait and watch!
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