The maiden appearance of Nishant Kumar – the son of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar – in a public function on January 17 not only took the political circle by complete surprise, but also exposed the nervousness within the ruling Janata Dal (United) and its alliance partner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the rumoured deteriorating mental health condition of the Bihar Chief Minister. Speculations about Nitish Kumar’s poor health condition has been doing the rounds in Bihar, although there has been no such confirmation from CM’s office or Nitish’s party JD (U).
While till sometimes back he was an asset for the saffron brigade, Nitish is now increasingly becoming a liability for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). He has already lost much of his credibility due to his frequent flip-flops and switching alliances.
If the post-Nitish JD(U) is likely to face an existential crisis, the BJP is struggling hard to find any suitable alternative face to fill the vacuum. After all, during the 2020 Assembly election rally at Damdaha in Purnea district he had made it loud and clear that “this is his last election.”
Nishant not only spoke at a function at Bakhtiyarpur in Patna district, the home-town of Nitish, but also interacted with the media. He appealed to the people of Bihar to once again repose faith on his father who accompanied him. During the occasion he paid floral tributes to freedom fighters, including his grandfather.
BJP’s inability to form government in Bihar on its own
With Nitish showing no signs of improvement, it is not yet known how his health will fare in the next nine months. The Bihar Assembly election is scheduled some time in the last week of October. Many NDA leaders are sceptic whether Nitish would be fit enough to lead the alliance to victory.
It is an established fact that the BJP cannot go with any chief ministerial candidate of its own in Bihar as it has been doing in several other states. This is largely because unlike elsewhere, the saffron party alone is not a strong enough force to form government alone. It has never come to power on its own in Bihar, even during the high-time of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the early 1990s and during the early years of Narendra Modi’s prime ministership.
The party has to rely heavily on other regional partners, most of whom have considerable clout on their respective castes.
The election result of 2015 and 2020 made it amply clear as to how important Nitish was for the BJP. In 2015, the NDA got only 58 seats. The BJP c0uld win only 53 of them, even when the most prominent face of the state party, Sushil Kumar Modi, was alive. This was simply because Nitish then contested in alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Congress.
The Grand Alliance walked away with 178 seats out of 243 member House. In 2020, the NDA just managed to scrap through by a slender margin simply because Nitish’s JD(U) though in NDA, had performed badly and won only 43 out of 122 seats on which it fielded its candidates.
Ironically, this poor show followed the stunning performance of NDA in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll in which it swept Bihar winning 39 out of 40 seats. In 2024 the tally came down to 31.
This clearly shows that parliamentary and Assembly elections are very much different. While in the
last three Lok Sabha polls the choice was always between Modi and opposition parties which apparently has no prime ministerial face, in the state poll, the fight would be directly between an ailing and old Nitish and young and more articulate, Tejashwi Yadav, who had twice worked as his
deputy.
Even though in 2020 Nitish was still in NDA, the Grand Alliance had posed a much bi challenge with Tejashwi single-handedly – his father Lalu Prasad was then in jail – almost led the RJD, Congress and
Left parties combine to victory.
His RJD emerged as the single largest party in the House, bagging 75 seats. Now, in wake of Nitish’s reportedly deteriorating health condition and absence of Sushil Modi , the NDA would be facing an uphill task.
Nitish’s actions bewilder his supporters
The people of Bihar are closely watching the chief minister who is regularly addressing public meetings in various functions and during his on-going Pragiti Yatra. Nitish is not sending the right signal when he, with folded hands, begs forgiveness for committing the mistake of forming government with RJD
twice.
His supporters were bewildered when on January 2, following the swearing in ceremony of new Governor of Bihar Arif Mohammad Khan, Nitish adoringly put his hand on the shoulder of Tejashwi after the latter greeted him. He could have easily avoided this public gesture at the time when he is repeatedly seeking forgiveness for twice joinng forces with the RJD.
At the same time his charges that Lalu Prasad and his wife Rabri Devi led a corrupt regime for 15 years is now not cutting much ice as he had in the last one decade ruled the state with the support of the same RJD, not once but twice. On a couple of occasions then Nitish had publicly declared Tejashwi as his successor as he wants to retire in 2025.
Nitish’s partymen were embarrassed when he bowed down to touch the feet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in full public view in Darbhanga on November 13, 2024. It was not the first time that he indulged in such an exercise. He had also touched the feet of former BJP Rajya Sabha MP R K Sinha 10 days earlier. On another occasion he even went down to touch the feet of an official.
Nitish had also made several glaring mistakes while delivering speeches during the campaigning for last year’s Lok Sabha poll. For example he once said that the NDA would win 4,000 seats in the election.
During the road-show held for BJP’s Patna Saheb candidate with PM Narendra Modi on May 12 last, the chief minister was handed over the election symbol not of his own party, but that of the BJP (Lotus).
Nitish had somewhat reluctantly performed this duty.
But the JD (U) had won 12 seats in the Lok Sabha elections, the same number of parliamentary constituencies which the BJP bagged. But that was largely due to the Narendra Modi factor.
In contrast to the Lok Sabha elections, in October 2025 the electorate would be voting for the post of chief minister – either Nitish or Tejashwi.
Declining Influence of Prashant Kishore
Initially, the emergence of Prashant Kishor’s newly floated Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) came as a threat to the
RJD as it feared that the party of former electoral strategist would take away some votes of Dalits,
Muslims, and backward castes. This would certainly make the task difficult for the RJD-led alliance.
The loss of all the four Assembly seats which went to by-election in November last year came as a big shock to the RJD and its alliance partner CPI ML (Liberation). The JSP had a role in this rout of the RJD-led alliance, which had won three of these four seats in the 2020 poll.
Incidentally, the three seats got vacant following the election of two RJD and one CPI ML (Liberation) legislators to the Lok Sabha. But RJD is now taking a sigh of relief as Prashant Kishor has lost some of his goodwill after the role he played during the recent agitation of the Bihar Public Service Commission examinees.
The media which used to give a lot of space to Prashant Kishor, has now been compelled to turn up the
heat on him. Though the JSP stir was against the ruling JD(U)-BJP government, the RJD too was alarmed over the increasing influence of PK. But when he mishandled the whole agitation, Prashant Kishor lost a substantial number of support of youths, upon whom he was relying heavily. The weakening of JSP in the election year is most likely to benefit RJD.
With Nitish in the autumn of his political career spanning 50 years, and the NDA struggling to find a state level leader of his stature, the task is uphill for the ruling combination of Bihar. The central leadership of BJP is finding it extremely difficult to tackle this situation.
If Nishant (aged 50) has been suddenly parachuted at the behest of the jittery BJP – which always fears any unexpected move by Nitish – it is too late an exercise. The problem with him is that, unlike much
younger Tejashwi (35), he has no experience nor is he inclined towards politics. At the same time his participation in politics will also deprive the NDA of the opportunity to target Lalu Prasad over dynasty politics.
Soroor Ahmed is a Patna-based freelance journalist.