Nitish Kumar’s deep sulk with BJP seen to signal mood for a new partner

Nitish Kumar, chief minister of Bihar, has put partner BJP on notice, skipping a meeting called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday and summoning leaders of his party the Janata Dal United (JD-U) to state capital Patna for a discussion on Tuesday. He has reportedly held meetings with opposition leaders and there are unconfirmed reports that he dialled Delhi seeking an appointment with Congress president Sonia Gandhi. 

The many signals are being read to mean that Nitish Kumar is looking to end his partnership with the BJP, renewed in 2017, and tenuous ever since. His MLAs or state legislators would reportedly like to avoid a mid-term election in Bihar, and to do that Nitish Kumar would have to join hands with opposition parties the Congress, Lalu Prasad’s RJD and the Left. 

Political activities have gathered pace in Patna on account of Nitish Kumar’s deep sulk – Rashtriya Janata Dal or RJD boss Tejaswi Yadav has called a meeting of his MLAs on Tuesday, a couple of hours before Nitish Kumar meets his team. Nitish and Tejaswi Yadav reportedly talked over the weekend.

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Nitish snubs the BJP

Officially, Nitish Kumar’s absence from the Niti Aayog meet chaired by PM Modi in Delhi on Sunday was explained as medical leave after a bout of Covid. But even before Covid struck, Nitish Kumar RSVPed regrets for all invitations from PM Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah in the last few weeks, including the oath ceremony of India’s new President Droupadi Murmu.

On Sunday, Nitish Kumar’s party also reiterated that it will not join the union council of ministers led by PM Modi at the Centre, disowning last year’s membership for its leader RCP Singh, who has now quit the JD(U). 

JD(U) president Rajiv Ranjan Singh aka Lalan Singh shifted from “all is well” on Sunday, to “it is clear what they (the BJP) are up to” on Monday.

Why Nitish Kumar is upset

Nitish Kumar’s chief grouse with the BJP is said to be what is described in his party as Amit Shah’s attempt to “control” the dynamics of the partnership in Bihar. The chief minister chaffs at not having the freedom to pick who from among BJP leaders will be part of his government. He is also not happy with the BJP’s choice for Bihar assembly speaker, Vijay Kumar Singh.

The Bihar chief minister also views as an insult the offer of a single spot in PM Modi”s council of ministers and has repeatedly refused to nominate a leader from his party. Last year, the JDU’s RCP Singh joined the central cabinet, but the party said he did not have an ok from Nitish Kumar. This year, the JDU denied RCP Singh a parliament seat, forcing him out of PM Modi’s of ministers. RCP quit the JDU on Saturday. 

The JDU has snubbed Amit Shah’s recent assertion that his party, the BJP, intends to continue the partnership for the 2024 national election. Leader Lalan Singh made clear that the JDU is keeping its options open. He accused the BJP of operating on the “Chirag Paswan model” a reference to another BJP partner the Lok Jansatta Party, which did not agree with the seat split and so contested the 2020 Bihar elections on its own. Nitish Kumar claims the LJP, led by Chirag Paswan, cut into his party’s vote share and so the JDU lost many seats. 

How the numbers stack up

All of Nitish Kumar’s woes stem from numbers. In the assembly elections held in 2020, his party and the BJP agreed to a split in seats that saw the JDU contest 115 of Bihar’s 243 seats, the BJP 110, and smaller regional partners the other 18. While the BJP won 74 seats, Nitish Kumar’s party could win only 43. Together their alliance had the most seats and the BJP honoured a pre-election agreement that Nitish Kumar would be chief minister, despite the fewer seats in the assembly. But that also meant that the BJP, as the largest partner, now had enormous say in the way Bihar was run. 

If he quits the alliance with the BJP, Nitish Kumar will need to find the support of 79 MLAs to make the majority mark of 122 in the assembly and continue as chief minister. Old partner Rashtriya Janata Dal or RJD has reportedly extended a hand. The RJD won the most seats, 75, in the 2020 elections. Along with partners Congress and the Left, it has the support of 110 seats to offer Nitish Kumar. 

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RJD signals support

“If Nitish chooses to dump NDA, what choice do we have except to embrace him? RJD is committed to fighting the BJP. If the chief minister decides to join this fight, we will have to take him along,” the RJD’s Shivanand Tiwary has said.

Nitish Kumar has been chief minister of Bihar since 2000, save a brief gap of a few months when he resigned owing to his party’s poor performance in the 2014 national elections. 

He has navigated break-ups in a way that new partners have continued to prop him as chief minister even as his party has won fewer seats. Nitish Kumar broke an alliance of many years when he ditched the BJP to join the RJD-Congress alliance, which calls itself the Mahagathbandhan or Grand alliance. They fought the 2015 elections together and won – the RJD got more seats than the JDU, but allowed Nitish Kumar to be chief minister. 

Nitish Kumar walked out of that alliance in 2017 and was, within hours, back with the BJP and back in the Chief Minister’s chair.