Barely a month after he settled in as Bihar chief minister for a third consecutive term, Nitish Kumar suffered a severe jolt from his muscle-flexing ally, the BJP. Six out of seven JD(U) MLAs in Arunachal Pradesh switched allegiances and joined the BJP in the North-Eastern state.
The 'coalition dharma' was violated on Christmas Eve. Nitish, who was then the National President of the JD(U), was about to address the national executive council meeting of his party. He looked shocked and dismayed about the development but chose not to lodge a protest with the top BJP leadership. Instead, he chose to bide his time as this was the third jolt he had received since the November 2020 Bihar Assembly polls results.
The first shock came when he was told by the saffron camp in clear terms that he could not select his favourite lieutenant Sushil Kumar Modi as his deputy (a post that Modi held since 2005, barring a short span). Instead, the BJP anointed two lesser-known individuals as the two deputy chief ministers. No one outside Bihar knew who they were (and many have still not heard about them).
The second shock was in the election of the Assembly Speaker. Ever since he became the chief minister in November 2005, Nitish had ensured that the Speaker’s post remained with the JD(U). And this continued from 2005 until 2020 (even when a dominant Lalu Prasad was an ally).
However, this was no longer the case.
The BJP insisted on having their man as the presiding officer of the Vidhan Sabha. A weakened Nitish was left with no option - he had to sign on the dotted line.
Deep within, Nitish probably disliked this big-brotherly approach of the BJP who had decided to arm-twist their ruling alliance partner, the JD(U).
A third setback was when the BJP bagged the lion’s share of plum portfolios.
Then, there was the recent criticism from Bihar BJP chief Dr Sanjay Jaiswal who questioned Nitish’s decision to impose a night curfew and said he wondered how a curfew from 9 pm to 5 am would help to check Covid-19 in the state.
It’s not often that someone questions Nitish on governance or administrative matters. However, with the main ally putting the Bihar chief minister on the backfoot, Nitish had to depute his aides Lallan Singh (Lok Sabha MP) and former Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha to castigate the Bihar BJP chief.
Eventually, both sides decided to wait for the Bengal Assembly results before attacking each other again. "Now that the BJP has been cornered in Bengal, the saffron camp won’t dare to offend Nitish, at least for the time being,” said noted political scientist Ajay Kumar.
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