'Paltu Ram' tag aside, Nitish still electoral linchpin, but will he be CM again?
As Bihar votes, speculation grows over whether BJP will sideline Nitish Kumar even if NDA wins. Despite anti-incumbency, Nitish still tops CM charts
“BJP ne agar voluntary lagwa diya toh.”
In more ways than one, the outcome of the Bihar polls, concluding on Tuesday (November 11), could hinge on how voters decode this one question buzzing in varying iterations, across the state this election season.
The ‘voluntary’ here refers to the anxiety shared by many voters, supporters alike of the ruling NDA and the Opposition’s Grand Alliance as well as those still undecided, who wonder if the BJP would edge Nitish Kumar out of the Chief Minister’s office in the event of yet another NDA victory. The extent of ‘electoral cooperation’ – the all-important issue of vote transfer – between the JD-U and the BJP is also being viewed through this prism.
Nitish Kumar's 20 years in Bihar
With two decades of a nearly uninterrupted run as CM, the 74-year-old Nitish's indelible imprint on Bihar’s contemporary politics can’t be denied or undermined. Much like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Nitish too can boast of a Teflon-coated image; one that remains largely unaffected by his failures – and there are many, borne out in Bihar’s continuing socio-economic backwardness and high crime rate – and his political promiscuity.
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Yet, travel across Bihar and ask anyone who they’d like to see occupying the CM’s chair after the elections, and Nitish still tops the chart by a wide margin. No one seems uneasy with the ‘Paltu Ram’ moniker he has earned with his somersaults between the NDA and Grand Alliance since 2015. For many who are convinced of his return as CM, the only question seems to be, ‘idhar se banenge ya udhar se’ – suggesting, will he helm another NDA regime or one of the Grand Alliance?
It is, thus, not surprising that despite Nitish not being officially endorsed by ally BJP for an extended tenure as CM, the state is plastered with posters and billboards announcing ‘25 se 30, Phir se Nitish (Nitish again from 2025 to 2030)’.
Allies spar over CM post
An explicit marker of the political heft he continues to command despite growing speculation over his failing mental faculties, palpable anti-incumbency against JD-U MLAs, a litany of allegations against some of his closest aides and rumours, of ally BJP’s unease with him is how voters, when asked about their electoral preference, almost always respond with either Nitish or Mahagathbandhan (the Opposition’s Grand Alliance led by RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav).
That an NDA government in the state could have a BJP Chief Minister or someone else from the JD-U at the steering wheel doesn’t seem to strike even the most unflinching supporters of the ruling coalition; lest one bumps into a devout BJP follower, in which case the response invariably is ‘Modi’ and not some BJP leader actually fighting it out in Bihar’s electoral ring.
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In battleground Bihar, this fascinating fixation with Nitish is playing out with myriad electoral implications – some evidently favourable for the Chief Minister, others not quite.
For starters, Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s unequivocal assertion that a decision on who will be the CM will be taken by NDA legislators post-poll has triggered a visible consolidation of JD-U cadre and public sympathy for Nitish.
Until a few months ago, Nitish’s frequently embarrassing displays of surrender before Modi – the grudging acceptance of parity with the BJP in seat-sharing, the supine capitulation on the Waqf Amendment Act, deafening silence on his previous demands for a special economic package for the state, and so on – were prompting prophecies of impending doom for his party.
In Bihar’s polls, Modi remains the rallying figure for BJP supporters, even as voters debate whether Nitish Kumar will retain the CM’s chair. Photo: PTI
'A silent coup?'
Resignations from the JD-U, particularly of old Nitish loyalists openly alleging a “silent coup” in the party by “BJP agents”, had become a routine affair. Social media was agog with Nitish’s imminent fall, and his frequent gaffes and awkward mannerisms in public had become steady fodder for uncharitable memes. The RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, Nitish’s prime challenger, was having a field day, mocking the JD-U chief as “achet mukhya mantri (comatose CM)”.
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Suddenly, much of that seems to have vanished in the background. Instead, there appears to be a reverential frenzy in Bihar to see Nitish back in the saddle. His Machiavellian Mukhyamantri Mahila Rozgar Yojana, which has seen Rs 10,000 disbursed to over a crore women in the state in the past month, appears to have further consolidated his hold over Bihar’s ‘mahila vote’ irrespective of their caste (though Yadav and an overwhelming section of Muslim women are still vouching for the Mahagathbandhan).
His core Luv-Kush vote bank of the Koeri and Kushwaha communities seems determined in most constituencies to not leave any scope for the BJP to push Nitish out of 1, Aney Marg.
RJD's outreach to Dalit communities
Though the Grand Alliance's assiduous outreach to the extremely backward and Dalit communities, which Nitish had steadily weaned away from the Lalu-era RJD over the past two decades, appears to be paying off in many districts, the shift is almost always more visible in constituencies where the Opposition candidate is facing off against a BJP nominee than against one contesting on a JD-U ticket.
This has, naturally, fanned Chinese whispers about the possibility of a wily Nitish, sensing a ‘BJP plot’ to unseat him, deliberately ensuring that the JD-U’s traditional vote isn’t transferred en masse to the BJP so that he remains the senior partner in the alliance.
Nitish camp blames BJP
Travelling through the districts of Vaishali, Muzaffarpur, Samastipur, Darbhanga, Supaul, Araria, Kishanganj, Purnia, Katihar, Khagaria and Begusarai – each vastly different in its electoral preference, this reporter came across scores of JD-U workers, still staunchly loyal to Nitish and sceptical of “Modi’s BJP”, explaining how, after Nitish’s first dalliance with the Grand Alliance in 2015, the BJP had adopted “different strategies to undermine Nitish”.
The common refrain seems to be that while it was on Nitish’s strength that the BJP built itself in Bihar, the saffron party was no longer content with being a pillion rider in power. Many in the JD-U ranks seem convinced that the party’s steadily declining Lok Sabha and Assembly seat tally after 2019 was because, while the JD-U gets its votes fully transferred to the BJP, the reciprocal vote transfer in constituencies where JD-U has candidates is only partial.
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Nitish’s supporters are also convinced that Lok Janshakti Party (RV) chief Chirag Paswan’s decision to break ranks with the NDA and go solo in the 2020 assembly polls was a “BJP-scripted move” that served its purpose of “sabotaging JD-U”. In the current elections too, the frosty equations between the LJP-R and JD-U are palpable, especially across the 29 seats that have fallen in Paswan’s kitty.
In constituencies where an LJP-RV candidate is in the fray, like Kasba in Purnia district or Parbatta in Khagaria district, JD-U leaders are rarely seen campaigning. The inside joke in the Nitish camp seems to be, “Chirag will have the same number of MLAs in Bihar as he has MPs in Lok Sabha”, alluding to a scenario wherein the LJP-RV may not be able to cross a single-digit tally (it had contested all 5 seats it fielded in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls) this election because of the JD-U’s non-cooperation.
Lok Janshakti Party (RV) chief Chirag Paswan’s decision to break ranks with the NDA ahead of 2020 assembly elections was criticised as BJP's scripted move. Photo: PTI
Grassroots still back Nitish Kumar
That this distrust among NDA partners has afflicted the coalition’s voter mobilisation, too, is apparent in many constituencies. In constituencies where the JD-U isn’t in the fray, voters who swear by Nitish but have no love lost for his allies are candid in disclosing they would vote for the NDA because “all that matters is Nitish’s victory” and that, irrespective of which coalition comes to power, the CM’s throne must go to Nitish.
It is this strange and almost filial devotion to Nitish that is also the biggest hurdle in RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav’s quest to become Bihar’s Chief Minister. While even the most die-hard of Nitish’s supporters among the backward castes and Dalits admit that they “got a voice” in caste-conflicted Bihar only because of Lalu, it is the JD-U chieftain they credit for ending the perceived hegemony of backward caste Yadavs that had come to define the state’s political landscape towards the latter half of RJD’s 15 year rule between 1990 and 2005.
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As ironic as it may seem to an outsider, after lording over the state for nearly 20 years, while the Chief Minister is still commonly referred to by the masses simply as Nitish, without anyone feeling the slightest need to add the honorific ‘ji, the RJD supremo, nearly three decades after stepping down as Chief Minister, firmly remains ‘Laluji’.
Tejashwi continues to be haunted by the ghost of Laluji’s infamous ‘jungle raj’ even if official data suggests that the last decade alone has seen an over 80 percent rise in Bihar’s crime rate under Nitish’s government. Photo: PTI
Struggles with Jungle Raj
The burden of that monosyllabic suffix lies heavily on Tejashwi, who continues to be haunted by the ghost of Laluji’s infamous ‘jungle raj’ even if official data suggests that the last decade alone has seen an over 80 percent rise in Bihar’s crime rate under Nitish’s much-hyped ‘sushasan’ (good) administration.
The fear of ‘Yadav hegemony’ returning to Bihar under Tejashwi is constantly fanned by the JD-U, even if Nitish in just the last six years has twice led short-lived governments with Tejashwi as his deputy. Nitish’s somersaults have, in a sense, helped keep the RJD buoyant and the BJP away from usurping the RJD’s electoral space.
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Through a plethora of populist schemes, a social-engineering that has long expanded beyond Kurmis and Kushwahas to include castes both forward and backward, a politics that is just ‘secular’ enough to keep at bay any backlash from Muslims and by eschewing dynastic politics at the cost of his son Nishant Kumar’s political future, Nitish has also ensured shrewdly that he remains the perfect counterweight to both RJD and the BJP.
That Bihar is now on edge over the prospect of Nitish being forced into ‘voluntary’ retirement and is once again coalescing around him is, thus, hardly surprising. Whether the BJP, equally eager to see one of its own ascend to the chief ministerial throne, has a strategy to neutralise Nitish’s shrewd manoeuvres is something that isn’t yet visible on the ground but then that is no guarantee of such a scheme emerging when the EVMs cough out Bihar’s poll results on November 14.
