Bihar polls: Simmering discontent within NDA as leaders hit campaign trail

For days now, the ongoing tug of war between constituents of the Grand Alliance in Bihar has made headlines with political rivals and commentators alike offering hot takes by the minute on the impending implosion of the Opposition bloc. In comparison, the ruling NDA coalition seems to present in public an image in contrast; the turbulence that hit its initial seat-sharing talks has now settled and its top leaders are hitting the campaign trail.

Yet, beneath this calm within the NDA can a tempest be gathering? Sources in the ruling coalition, comprising the BJP, Janata Dal-United, Lok Janshakti Party- Ramvilas, Hindustani Awam Morcha and Rashtriya Lok Morcha, told The Federal that though the alliance’s leaders have, unlike the Opposition camp, overcome the early hiccups that had rocked their seat-sharing talks, there is still simmering discontent within the bloc with the BJP and LJP-R aligned against the other three outfits.

Nitish refuses to campaign for LJP

Chief minister Nitish Kumar, who launched the JD-U’s campaign with a rally in Muzaffarpur on Tuesday (October 21), has flatly refused to campaign in any of the 29 constituencies where Union minister Chirag Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party-Ramvilas has fielded candidates. Nitish, it is learnt, is also “not open to sharing the stage with Chirag” at any joint NDA rally that the BJP leadership in Delhi may plan to conduct in Bihar to show the coalition’s united strength.

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In fact, sources in the JD-U told The Federal that at their recent meeting in Patna, Nitish conveyed to Union Home Minister Amit Shah that while he would participate in rallies that Prime Minister Narendra Modi may address in the state, he has no intention of extending the same courtesy to other senior BJP leaders Delhi plans to dispatch to Patna over the next three weeks of the two-phase election’s campaign.

Smaller allies like Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) chief and Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi and Rashtriya Lok Morcha chief Upendra Kushwaha, sulking ever since their parties were allotted just six seats each in NDA’s seat-sharing deal, too have decided to campaign only in constituencies where their parties have fielded candidates.

This, of course, is not to see that the BJP leadership is aching to have Nitish, Manjhi or Kushwaha campaign in the 101 seats where the saffron party has fielded its nominees. Given Nitish’s unpredictable and often embarrassing behaviour in public, several BJP leaders are wary of inviting him to their campaign even though they acknowledge that the chief minister remains the alliance’s most bankable face among the backward classes, which comprise just over 63 percent of the state’s electorate.

Why BJP is keeping Nitish at bay

The reason for BJP keeping Nitish at bay, however, isn’t simply his erratic behaviour, said a senior Bihar BJP leader who is also contesting the polls. This BJP leader explained that his “party doesn’t want to give any ground to Nitish to claim that he had a role to play in BJP’s victory, especially in some tough constituencies which have a caste mix that is more inclined towards him than towards the BJP leadership… if we win big without directly banking on Nitish, which we are confident about, it will come in handy after the elections”.

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The resentment in Nitish’s JD-U, Manjhi’s HAM and Kushwaha’s RLM isn’t limited to the fewer than expected seats their respective parties ended up with in the seat-sharing deal. As per the agreement within the ruling bloc, the BJP and the JD-U are contesting 101 seats each while Union minister Chirag Paswan’s LJP-R has fielded candidates on 29 seats, leaving the HAM and the RLM with a share of six seats each. That the JD-U, HAM and RLM have all been upset with Paswan walking away with 29 seats is widely known but sources say the unease within these three parties isn’t just against the LJP-R.

Sources say the trio of Nitish, Manjhi and Kushwaha are convinced that the BJP has found a willing accomplice in Paswan to usurp the electoral space of the three parties that all have their roots in the erstwhile Janata Parivar. A constant refrain among JD-U old timers is that the BJP’s attempts to undermine their party had begun with the 2020 polls, when Chirag was “propped up by the BJP leadership” to break away from the alliance and “strategically” field his party’s candidates in a way that would hurt the JD-U the most.

Though Chirag is now firmly back within the NDA fold, sources in the JD-U say his increased stature within the alliance, as evident in the 29 seats his party was allotted, was essentially a “different variant of the 2020 poll experiment to keep up the pressure on the JD-U”.

Chirag’s combative pitch to enter the Bihar poll fray himself and contest his debut Assembly polls despite being a Union minister was also seen by the JD-U as part of the same “BJP ploy”; a perception that has only strengthened ever since the seat-sharing talks ended with the LJP-R getting 29 seats and Chirag quietly burying his ambition of switching to state politics. A senior JD-U leader told The Federal that Nitish is convinced that Chirag’s political moves in Bihar were being “scripted by the BJP” and has Shah’s Machiavellian stamp all over it.

Nitish's sole interest

What seems to have particularly spooked Nitish is also how, in the initial days following the announcement of NDA’s seat-sharing deal, he discovered that the LJP-R had been allotted certain seats that were traditionally part of the JD-U’s kitty. Since officially the alliance had only announced the seat break-up among the constituents without giving out the details of specific constituencies that each party had been allotted, Nitish pulled a fast one on the BJP. He declared candidates for Sonbarsha, Alauli, Rajgir, Ekma, and Morwa, which were apparently constituencies that the LJP-R was promised by the BJP without consulting the JD-U.

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Following Nitish’s move, the BJP leadership intervened and is learnt to have compensated Chirag by granting him some seats – and even candidates – from the BJP’s own fold. However, the briskness with which the BJP moved in to cover up what could have been a potential embarrassment for Chirag only convinced Nitish further that the LJP-R chief and the BJP had been working in tandem against him.

Nitish’s sole interest in the ongoing elections now is to ensure that post-poll the JD-U emerges as the largest party within the NDA, leading over the BJP’s tally by a fair distance, unlike the 2020 polls when the BJP emerged as the JD-U’s senior partner for the first time because of the damage Chirag’s party inflicted on Nitish’s candidates. If the NDA returns to power and the JD-U to its previously held tag of a senior ally, JD-U sources say it would not only make Nitish indispensable once more to the BJP but, perhaps more importantly, help him keep open the option of another somersault if the saffron party ever has designs of easing him out of the CM’s office.

On his part, Nitish has told his party leaders to ensure the JD-U doubles its 2020 tally this time. With the party contesting 101 seats, the same as the BJP, this target may seem unrealistic as it would mean the JD-U securing at least 90 seats. The chief minister has, however, gone all out to ensure that despite the JD-U contesting the lowest number of seats in the past over decades, his core vote bank of backward castes and women has no reason to complain.

Of its 101 seats, the JD-U has fielded backward class candidates on 37 seats and those from the extremely backward classes on another 22, with his traditional support base of Kurmi, Koeri, Dhanuks, and Kushwaha communities getting primacy. The party has also fielded 13 women candidates while Muslims and forward castes have got four and 22 candidates, respectively.

In addition, the wily chief minister has also kept lines of communication open with Manjhi and Kushwaha, both leaders who had decided to branch out to form their own political parties after falling out with Nitish over different issues. With their interests now aligned once again with Nitish’s, Manjhi and Kushwaha have been singing the same tune as the JD-U; demanding that the BJP officially declare Nitish as the CM face of the alliance instead of saying, as Shah did recently, that while the alliance is fighting the polls under Nitish, the leadership question will be settled once the results are announced on November 14.