The many sides of ‘sushasan babu’

In 2013, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar quit the NDA when BJP announced his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi as the BJP’s campaign committee chief for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Beyond the ideological stand, a burning ambition to move to the national stage had guided Kumar’s move. In the event, the Modi-led BJP won a majority of its own, while Kumar’s JD(U) could win only two of Bihar’s 40 Lok Sabha seats.

In 2015, friends turned foes, Kumar and RJD’s Lalu Prasad joined hands and, along with the Congress, defeated the BJP in the Bihar Assembly polls. But Congress resisted when in 2017, Kumar wanted to be the coordinator for leading the Opposition charge in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

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In July 2017, Kumar switched sides to revive his alliance with the BJP. However, the BJP outfoxed Kumar in the 2020 Bihar polls when LJP’s Chirag Paswan, a constituent of the NDA, fielded candidates against Kumar. With Tejashwi Yadav-led upsurge of RJD and LJP eating into Kumar’s Dalit support base, the JD(U) was reduced to the number three party in the Assembly. For the first time since 2005, when they had first formed the government in Bihar, the BJP now had more MLAs than Kumar’s JDU.

Kumar, 71, is an electrical engineer who, inspired by socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan, quit his job in the Bihar Electricity Board to join politics. Kumar had supported Prasad in the Janata Dal before parting ways in 1994.

George Fernandes and Kumar allied with the BJP in Bihar in the 1996 Lok Sabha polls. In 2000, he was elected the Bihar CM, but the government was short-lived. Kumar subsequently served as railway minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. A Kurmi, Kumar was elected the Bihar CM in 2005, built a support base among women and Dalits with his welfare schemes and providing better law and order and came to be known as ‘sushasan babu’ (good governance man).