Weakened by ‘enemy within’, Nitish Kumar strives to rise again

At a time when the national media is focusing on five Assembly elections and the coronavirus pandemic, one issue which has largely gone unnoticed is how Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has been consolidating himself after being consistently weakened by his ‘enemy within’ in the last few months.

A few days ago, Nitish made the lone Lok Janshakti Party MLA join the Janata Dal (United), thereby making the LJP, established by his Socialist friend late Ram Vilas Paswan, redundant and non-existent. But more than the senior Paswan, who is no more, Nitish had an axe to grind with Chirag Paswan, Ram Vilas’ son.

It was Chirag who had inflicted a body blow to Nitish during the November 2020 Assembly elections and reduced his JD(U) to the third slot (by fielding dummy candidates against the party). Nitish’s pocket organisation could win in only 43 constituencies out of the 115 seats it contested — a relatively poor performance in the 243-member Assembly (and in a state which Nitish has been ruling since 2005).

Chirag’s LJP, too, could not win more than one seat but it damaged the prospects of the JD(U) in over 70 seats. This served twin purposes: For the first time in the last two decades, the BJP became an ‘elder brother’ by winning 74 seats. Second, Nitish, who always claimed to have won polls after polls due to his good governance, was stopped in his tracks and lost his bargaining power within the NDA.

Nitish was aware of the tacit support extended by the BJP to the LJP (as most of the LJP candidates were BJP rebels). But the JD(U) strongman kept mum, biding his time and waiting for an opportune moment to hit back.

Last week, he made the lone LJP MLA Raj Kumar Singh, the legislator from Matihani in Begusarai, join the JD(U) after he sang paeans of the Bihar chief minister and derided Chirag in public.

But then, Singh was not the first MLA to cross over the fence. Prior to this, Nitish had made the lone BSP MLA Jama Khan join the JD(U), and eventually elevated him as Bihar’s Minority Welfare Minister. Mayawati’s BSP, too, became non-existent after this episode.

The process to woo all those who matter in this part of the cow-belt did not end there. Independent MLA Sumit Kumar Singh, one fine evening, met Nitish and, after pledging his loyalty towards the JD(U) strongman, was made a Cabinet minister.

The realignment of forces didn’t stop there. Nitish’s protege-turned-bete noire Upendra Kushwaha, a former Union minister who has changed tracks multiple times in the last two decades, had a closed-door meeting with Nitish at the latter’s official residence 1, Aney Marg. After a few more rounds of meeting with Nitish’s closest aide and Rajya Sabha member Basishtha Narayan Singh, Kushwaha eventually decided to merge his outfit Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) with the JD(U). Kushwaha had floated RLSP in 2013 after severing ties with his mentor Nitish and joining the NDA in 2014.

The merger plan was a mutually beneficial decision as Kushwaha represents Koeris, while Nitish is a Kurmi, one of the strong OBCs (other backward castes). Together, Kurmis and Koeris are called Luv-Kush (a term borrowed from the Ramayana) and form 10% of the electorate, which could always tilt the balance.

In a caste-ridden state like Bihar, Nitish realised that no matter how good the governance may be, it is the assiduously-cultivated caste configuration that eventually pays electoral dividends.

It is against this backdrop that he has been wooing upper castes, OBCs, EBCs (extremely backward castes), Mahadalits and Muslims, so that he could once again build a rainbow coalition of different segments, which helped him assume the chief minister’s chair in 2005 and thereafter made his position unassailable.

Suits BJP

Secondly, ruling party sources aver that Nitish is aware of the BJP design that “a weakened Nitish suits the saffron camp”. Nitish, therefore, has been showing the sign of resilience so that after the West Bengal elections, the BJP can’t launch an offensive campaign against him.

The BJP has already been testing the waters in Bihar by asking its middle-level leaders to suggest that Nitish should adopt the Yogi model of governance and check the crime graph by giving its police a free hand for ‘encounters’.

Such a demand has been outrightly rejected by the JD(U). Its Bihar working president and key Nitish aide Ashok Choudhary said, “such incidents lead to human rights violations and won’t be allowed in Bihar”.

But more than a suggestion, it was a pinprick by the BJP, which wants a chief minister of its own in Bihar, the only state in the Hindi heartland where there has been no BJP CM till date.

“Wait till the Bengal results. If we score a landslide in the neighbouring state, the side effects will be reflected in Bihar too,” a senior BJP MP told DH on condition of anonymity.

But political experts don’t agree with BJP’s aggression and termed the plan “over-ambitious and far-fetched”.

“Ask anyone who is the BJP deputy chief minister here. Not many would be able to name either of the two DyCMs. The BJP currently faces talent deficit and is bereft of a leader who can match Nitish’s stature,” said political scientist Ajay Kumar. He, however, hastened to add, “But then, Narendra Modi is good at giving us surprises.”