After months of sparring with the BJP, Nitish Kumar on Tuesday finally pulled the plug on his party’s alliance with the saffron outfit, paving the way for the revival of the seven-party Mahagathbandhan Government and opening up the possibility of his emergence as a common candidate to take on Prime minister Narendra Modi in 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Kumar will take oath as Chief Minister and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav as his deputy on Wednesday at 2 pm, sources said.
Earlier in the day, after resigning as NDA Chief Minister, Kumar staked claim to form a new Government when he was unanimously declared the leader of the Opposition grand alliance. He submitted a list of 164 supporting MLAs to the Governor.
In the State Assembly, which has an effective strength of 242, requiring 121 MLAs for a majority, the RJD has the highest number of 79 MLAs followed by the BJP (77) and the JD(U) with 44.
The JD(U) also enjoys the support of four MLAs of former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha and an Independent.
The Congress has 19 MLAs while the CPIML(L) has 12 and CPI and CPI(M) have two each. Besides, one MLA belongs to Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM.
The development has come as a setback for the BJP, which is now completely isolated in Bihar. Given the caste combination in the State, the grand alliance will have an edge in the Lok Sabha polls unless the BJP is able to change the narrative of State politics altogether.
The way the relation between the BJP and the JD(U) deteriorated over the months, Tuesday happenings should not come as a surprise to anyone. Any attempt to salvage the alliance fell apart after the Maharashtra development, which made Nitish all the more suspicious about the repeat of the same experiment in Bihar.
After some of the JD(U) MLAs brought it to the notice of Nitish that they were offered huge sums of money to walk out of JD(U), Nitish decided that enough is enough.
Going ahead, there is a strong possibility that Nitish could pass the Chief Ministerial baton to Tejashwai Yadav in 2024 and himself take a plunge in national politics.
His party leaders believe that Nitish is the best bet to take on Modi in 2024 for a variety of reasons. He has a clean image, the barb of dynastic politics will also not stick to him, and being a powerful OBC leader he could match Modi on the caste turf as well.
“If you assess the personalities in the country, Nitish is eligible to become Prime Minister. We are not making any claim today, but he has all the qualities of a Prime Minister,” Upendra Kushwaha, president of the Janata Dal(U) National Parliamentary Board said in Patna.
Veteran RJD leader Sharad Yadav said Kumar could be a Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
However, Kumar refused to respond to questions about him being the Prime Ministerial face in the next Lok Sabha polls as he stepped out of the Raj Bhawan in Patna after resigning as NDA’s Chief Minister.
“Kumar will be more of an acceptable face for a joint Opposition candidate compared to Mamata Banerjee in 2024. To defeat the BJP, you have to either change the rules of engagement or beat them at their own game,” suspended Congress leader Sanjay Jha said.
Leaders close to Kumar feel that the Chief Minister realised that if he wanted to play a long innings in politics, he must jump to the Opposition bandwagon or else he could become irrelevant after the 2024 general election both for the BJP and the Opposition.
The script was ready and the JD(U) legislator party meeting convened by Kumar was a mere formality to endorse a decision that had already been arrived at. After the meeting gave its nod to snap ties with the BJP, Kumar met Governor Phagu Chauhan, first to hand in his resignation as the NDA Chief Minister and then after being elected leader of the RJD-led `Mahagathbandhan’ (grand alliance) to stake claim for the top job in the state once again.
His move which was a reversal of what happened in 2017 when he left the Mahagathbandhan to rejoin the NDA, left ally BJP out in the cold for the second time in nine years.
After the JD(U) meeting where ally BJP was accused of “backstabbing”, Kumar drove to Raj Bhavan to tender his resignation. Kumar told newspersons outside the Raj Bhavan, “It was decided at the party meeting that we quit the NDA. I have, therefore, resigned as the NDA’s Chief Minister.”
From there, he returned to his residence, stopping for a while to inform the large posse of journalists “it was decided at the party meeting that we quit the NDA. I have, therefore, resigned as the NDA’s Chief Minister”.
Shortly afterwards, Kumar drove to the residence of former Chief Minister Rabri Devi, just across the street, where all leaders of the Grand Alliance, comprising RJD, Congress and the Left, had gathered.
Kumar, who was accompanied by JD(U) national president Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan, spent nearly half an hour at Devi’s residence. He returned along with the Leader of the Opposition and his former Deputy Chief Minister Yadav, who was armed with a letter of support to Kumar.
About 15 minutes later, Kumar met the Governor again to stake claim for forming a new Government, this time accompanied by Yadav and senior colleagues in the JD(U) besides former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi whose four MLA-strong Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) has expressed “unconditional support” to the new formation.
“Nitish is the most experienced Chief Minister in the country who has taken a courageous step,” said Yadav.
He had deserted the NDA for the first time in 2013 after Narendra Modi became the coalition’s Prime Ministerial candidate.
Earlier in the day, when a JD(U) meeting was going on, senior leader Upendra Kushwaha in a tweet congratulated Kumar for leading a “new coalition in new form,” implicitly acknowledging the split and embracing the RJD-led `Mahagathbandhan’ (Grand Alliance) to continue in office.
A meeting of the RJD-led Grand Alliance, also comprising the Left and the Congress, took place at Devi’s house, across the street from the Chief Minister’s residence.
The CM is understood to have told party legislators and MPs that he had been driven against the wall by the BJP which tried to weaken his JD(U), first by propping up Chirag Paswan’s rebellion and later through the party’s former national president RCP Singh.
Singh was made a Cabinet Minister at the Centre without Kumar’s explicit agreement. Consequently, when his term as a Rajya Sabha member ended, the JD(U) refused to give him another term as an MP, thus ending his stint as Cabinet Minister as well. Following this, rumours of a split in the JD(U) engineered by Singh’s supporters surfaced.
