Shifting power balance in Bihar’s cabinet formation leaves Nitish on weaker footing

It didn’t take even 48 hours since Nitish Kumar’s swearing-in as the chief minister to expose the altered power equations within the ruling NDA coalition of Bihar. Nitish may have returned to the CM office for the 10th time in two decades, and that too on the back of a robust victory both for his party and alliance, yet, signs of the BJP’s growing dominance within the coalition and the JD-U’s declining heft were evident as Nitish allocated portfolios to his cabinet colleagues on Friday evening.

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For the first time ever, the home department that Nitish always retained under his charge through the over 19 years of his chief ministerial run was ceded to the BJP, with Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary taking command. The “sacrifice”, as one contemporary of Nitish in the JD-U told The Federal, was both a “stamp on our reduced stature in the NDA and a precursor to more such difficult decisions”.

Nitish’s bargaining power erodes

The JD-U veteran, who did not wish to be named, called his party’s impressive victory on 85 of the 101 seats it contested in the recent polls “inconsequential” in face of the marginally higher 89 seat tally of the BJP given that the results, which gave the broader NDA coalition 202 seats against the 35 seats of the Grand Alliance, had robbed Nitish of the “bargaining power he always kept in Bihar politics” and of his ability to ally with any party “on his own terms”.

In the run-up to the Bihar cabinet formation, it was widely reported that both JD-U and the BJP were eying the home department and the post of Assembly Speaker. Sources in the JD-U had maintained all along that while the BJP was unlikely to leave its claim on the Speaker’s post, it was amenable to Nitish retaining charge of the home department. In fact, senior JD-U leaders, who spoke to The Federal, were confident until Friday morning that Nitish would prevail upon the BJP’s central leadership to “at least accept a continuation of status quo from the previous government” when the home portfolio remained under Nitish while the BJP got the Speaker’s post.

When portfolios were allocated on Friday evening, the BJP prised the home department from Nitish’s control. BJP sources maintain that the party will also retain the Speaker’s post and its nine-term Gaya Town MLA Prem Kumar is being tipped as the frontrunner for the role.

The JD-U stalwart quoted earlier said signs of the BJP “controlling the levers of the new government” were clear the moment names of MLAs to be sworn-in as ministers were declared.

BJP claims key portfolios

The coalition partners had agreed to a cabinet formation formula wherein the BJP was to get 16 ministers and the JD-U 15 ministers, including the CM’s post for Nitish, while three ministers were to be included from Chirag Paswan’s LJP-R and one each from Jitan Ram Manjhi’s HAM and Upendra Kushwaha’s RLM. Sources had confirmed to The Federal ahead of the swearing-in that Nitish was likely to keep some cabinet berths vacant in case of accommodations he needed to make at a later stage due to presently unforeseen power dynamics.

As such, at Thursday’s swearing-in ceremony, nine cabinet berths (Bihar can have a maximum of 36 cabinet ministers, including the CM) were left vacant – a bulk of them from the JD-U’s quota. That the BJP got 14 of its ministers sworn in as against eight from the JD-U, two from the LJP-R and one each from the HAM and RLM, also showed how sure-footed the saffron party was of its standing within the alliance and the loyalty of its MLAs.

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The bigger surprise, however, came a day later with portfolios being distributed among the ministers. While Choudhary, who has also been retained as one of Nitish’s two deputies in the new government (the other being the BJP’s Vijay Kumar Sinha), walked away with the home portfolio, clinching control from Nitish over Bihar’s law and order apparatus, a bulk of other plum portfolios too went the BJP’s way.

The portfolios of rural and urban development reforms, as well as mines and minerals, went to Deputy CM Sinha, while state BJP chief and MLC Dilip Jaiswal was given the industries department. The party’s former state chief, Mangal Pandey, walked home with the dual responsibilities of the hefty health and law departments. Likewise, BJP MLA Nitin Nabin was made minister for road construction, urban development and housing, while Ram Kripal Yadav was given charge of agriculture. First-term MLA Shreyasi Singh was given dual charge of the information technology and sports departments, while Pramod Chandravanshi was given charge of the departments of environment and cooperatives.

JD-U walks into a fiscal trap

For the JD-U, the only two consolations seemed to be that Nitish managed to retain charge of the department of general administration, giving him final say in matters of transfers and postings of bureaucrats, including IPS officers who would otherwise be reporting to Home Minister Samrat Chaudhary, and of Vigilance. Additionally, the finance and commercial tax portfolios, previously held by the BJP ministers, was given to JD-U veteran Bijendra Prasad Yadav, who also got to retain his energy portfolio alongside planning and development as well as prohibition and excise.

Sources in the JD-U, however, said that the BJP’s willingness to swap the home portfolio for the department of finance should not be seen as a “just bargain” but a “bitter pill” (kadwa ghoot) that Nitish has been made to swallow.

“Everyone knows that Bihar’s finances have been in a mess, and we have a massive debt burden to deal with. In addition to that, we now have the added burden to fulfil the massive poll promises we made regarding different cash incentive schemes, including the Mahila Rozgar Yojana and increased pensions, which many believe was the main driving force of NDA’s victory,” a minister from the JD-U pool told The Federal.

The minister added, “At some stage, we will have to redefine the criteria for these schemes to prune the beneficiary list because of the state of Bihar’s finances, and then the BJP will try to shift all the blame on us. Bijendra Babu is walking into a minefield; despite our alliance, the Centre has not even given Bihar the special status that we have been demanding for long. If we had got at least that, then Bihar could have got increased financial assistance from the Centre, and Bijendra Babu could have saved face. The finance ministry currently is like a crown of thorns for JD-U.”

Home portfolio shift alarms JD-U

The loss of the home department to the BJP has also triggered a different but pertinent fear within a section of JD-U leaders. “As long as the home department was with Nitish, no one in the BJP could have dared to bring the BJP’s bulldozer justice model to Bihar. Even while staying in alliance with the BJP, the JD-U could protect Bihar’s Muslims from harassment (by Hindutva hot-heads) and any kind of excessive state action. With Samrat Choudhary in charge now and Nitish’s health the way it is, we don’t know what this new arrangement will mean for Bihar’s Muslims. We will have to keep a close eye on how things develop in Seemanchal or in the districts neighbouring UP. This (BJP getting the home portfolio) is definitely not a good sign for us or for Bihar,” a senior JD-U leader, who lost the recent polls from a constituency in the Muslim-dominated Seemanchal region, told The Federal.

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Nitish may have managed to retain in his cabinet close aides like Shravan Kumar (rural development and transport), Ashok Chaudhary (rural works) Vijay Chaudhary (parliamentary affairs, water resources, information & publicity) and Leshi Singh (food and consumer affairs), among others but his quiet acquiescence to the BJP’s demand for the home portfolio and likely also the Speaker’s post shows how weak and supine he has become despite a mammoth win.