Bihar: Why Nitish Kumar and Chirag Paswan are at loggerheads

It’s not only the Grand Alliance which is grappling with the summer of discontent. The NDA in Bihar is also facing a similar rebellion with the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) mounting pressure on another ally JD(U) by constantly targeting Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

The ties between the two allies got so soured, of late, that the BJP had to depute its national general secretary Bhupendra Yadav to douse the fire.

However, despite separate rounds of meeting between Yadav and Chirag and then with Nitish, it can’t be conclusively said that truce between the two has been eventually reached.

The ‘bitterness’ between the two regional satraps was all the more apparent when Chirag, who is the national president of the LJP after Ram Vilas Paswan passed on the baton to his son last year, asked his partymen to “be prepared to contest on all the 243 Assembly seats in Bihar.”

This was followed by a drastic action on July 1 against an LJP office-bearer Ram Chandra Bharti who was shown the door for giving a press statement that “NDA was intact in Bihar.”

Chirag, who, before the outbreak of Covid-19, was touring the state, has been in a rebellious mood and quite critical of Nitish since March this year. He questioned the JD (U) strongman over the poor law and order in March, slammed Nitish on the migration issue in April, asked the Bihar CM to take a leaf out of Yogi’s book (in bringing back stranded students from Kota in Rajasthan) in May, and again put Nitish in the dock in June for having failed to create employment avenues in Bihar.

“Chirag is, of late, getting too big for his boots. Nitish Kumar's acceptance as an undisputed leader in Bihar has been reiterated by Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. But even then, if someone has an axe to grind, he should meet Nitish ji personally and resolve the issue,” said a senior ruling party leader, considered close to Nitish.

But this, the LJP sources say, is exactly where the problem lies. “Nitish Kumar hardly responds to Chirag’s call. And it is this indifferent attitude of the JD (U) strongman which has widened the chasm between the two leaders,” the LJP source averred.

A ruling party source told DH on Friday that Chirag has been actually driving a hard bargain for the Assembly elections and wants a larger pie in the 243 constituencies in the state. “Besides, he wants his two members to be accommodated out of 12 MLCs to be nominated under Governor’s quota,” the source said, hoping the rift within the NDA won’t widen further.