OPINION: ‘Sutradhar’ Nitish leaves Opposition alliance; now what?

Nitish’s somersault occurred when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra entered Bihar via Kishanganj, bordering Bengal.

Perhaps the BJP’s strategists timed Nitish’s entry into the NDA to gain more psychological advantage over the INDIA bloc, which is locked in the intricate exercise of sharing seats in several states.

Also Read: ‘Cong reached seat-sharing understanding with some INDIA partners’

BJP’s calculations

The BJP apparently calculates that the consecration of the Ram temple at Ayodhya, coupled with the massive publicity campaign for the return of Narendra Modi for a third term as prime minister, has created a strong buzz in favour of the saffron party in north India.

The BJP won Assembly polls recently in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, strengthening its hold over the states in the Hindi heartland.

But the saffron party appeared to have been suffering from a sense of insecurity in Bihar after Nitish dumped it in August 2022 and joined the Mahagathbandhan in the state with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), as the largest party with 79 MLAs, and its president Lalu Prasad Yadav — by far the biggest champion of the social justice movement and the most profound symbol of anti-Hindutva politics.

Moreover, the BJP-led alliance won 39 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar in the 2019 elections.

Obviously, the saffron strategists feared that they might not repeat their 2019 performance with Nitish staying put in the Mahagathbandhan.

Will the BJP repeat its 2019 performance in 2024 in Bihar now? The BJP strategists might be optimistic about their prospect with Nitish on their side, but the precise answer will have to wait till the poll results are out.

In 2014, when Nitish’s JD(U) contested the polls alone, it won two seats with a vote share of a little over 15 percent.

Subsequently, he joined the Mahagathbandhan with the RJD and the Congress — it won 178 seats against the BJP’s 53.

Nitish dumped the Mahagathbandhan and went back to the NDA in 2017. His JD(U) won 16 seats out of 17 against the BJP’s 17 in 2019 polls.

However, in the 2020 Assembly polls, the JD(U) suffered hugely and was reduced to 42 MLAs. The BJP won 76 seats and made Nitish the chief minister as per its pre-poll commitment, but the poll results clearly reflected an erosion in Nitish’s popularity among the voters.

His party-men accused the BJP of “weakening” the JD(U)’s prospects by propping up Chirag Paswan — son of late Ram Vilas Paswan, whose Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) fielded its candidates against the JD(U).

But the fact remains that the voters preferred the LJP candidates over the JD(U)’s. The LJP didn’t win many seats, but its candidates cut into enough votes to defeat the JD(U) in over 32 seats, according to the latter’s own assessment.

The 2020 Assembly poll results, apparently, reflected “disenchantment” with Nitish that might have persuaded the voters to prefer the LJP over JD(U).

Also Read: KTR predicts disintegration of the INDIA bloc

The perceived implications

To be fair to Nitish, his repeated flip-flops between the “radical Hindutva” represented by Narendra Modi’s regime and the “inclusive” politics of the Opposition might not have affected his image as a reasonably good administrator.

Besides, he is free from the blemishes of corruption and nepotism. But it has undoubtedly dented his ideological identity.

The BJP’s strategists might fuel the perception that they have “dismantled” the INDIA bloc by taking away its “pilot”.

However, Nitish’s switch-over to the BJP will have little impact beyond Bihar. Though Nitish was an MP for six terms and was a Union minister for a long time, he never emerged as a national leader in a position to influence the course of politics in other states.

Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh, Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, and the Congress in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh have little use of Nitish in their battle against the BJP.

And Nitish has switched over to the BJP against the background of his Mahagathbandhan government — comprising the RJD, the Congress and the Left parties — carrying out the caste survey, raising the quota for Extremely Backward Classes, Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes up to 65 percent and giving over 4 lakh jobs to the youths.

Also Read: Union minister sees Mamata, Bhagwant remarks as ‘collapse of INDIA bloc’

What lies ahead for Bihar?

Newly-former deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav, RJD leader and son of Lalu Prasad Yadav, promised to give 10 lakh jobs to the youths during the 2020 Assembly elections, and his party had been pressing for the caste survey and proportionate representation to the marginalised sections in governance.

The Mahagathbandhan government fulfilled what Tejaswhi promised by giving jobs.

Logically, the credit for giving jobs on such a huge scale and the hiked reservation for marginalised sections would stay with RJD. The party would naturally expect the raised quota — coupled with BJP’s “aggressive” Hindutva — to consolidate marginalised sections and minorities more behind the RJD, which also has the extreme Left CPI-ML-Liberation, known for its strong sway among the poorer classes in several pockets of Bihar, with it.

Moreover, Tejashwi Yadav performed reasonably well as Nitish’s deputy and appears to have some goodwill among the younger voters.

The JD(U) has shifted the blame for Nitish’s exit from the INDIA bloc to the Congress. Its chief spokesperson, KC Tyagi, said: “Our leader (Nitish) worked hard to make what became known as INDIA, with the Congress as its largest component. He got Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav and Arvind Kejriwal on board along with the Congress, but the latter was always arrogant. It didn’t accommodate the regional parties in its strongholds but wanted to grow at its cost in the states where it didn’t exist. The Congress’ obstinacy forced Nitish to leave it.”

Though Nitish steadfastly denied that he wished to become a convenor of the INDIA bloc or be projected as the prime ministerial candidate, JD(U) leaders did wish the coalition to do both of those things.

Speculations were doing the rounds that Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal, who proposed Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge as the prime ministerial candidate at the coalition’s Mumbai conclave, were opposed to accepting Nitish as a convenor.

At an online meeting of the INDIA bloc recently, which Mamata skipped, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechuri proposed Nitish as a convenor, and other parties — including Congress and the RJD — supported it.

But Nitish refused the responsibility. Perhaps Nitish, despite his efforts to unite several parties in the INDIA bloc, might not have earned enough “trust” among the opposition parties to lead them as their convener due to his repeated flip-flops. He, apparently, suffered from a “trust deficit”.

(Nalin Verma is a senior journalist, media educator and independent researcher in folklore. He is the biographer of RJD supremo and former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav.)