#Nitish Kumar has nine lives. Bihar’s Chief Minister for the past 15 years, gritty survivor of multiple political unions and dramatic breakups, has pulled it off again. 

Of course, the new balance of power that Bihar%u2019s 17-hour vote count has revealed, put his fate neatly in the hands of ally BJP.  

The BJP,  for long the junior partner of Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United in Bihar, has now reversed that status making big gains and leading their alliance, the NDA, to 125 seats in the 243-member assembly. It also came heartbreakingly close to being the single largest party. Tejashwi Yadav%u2019s RJD stole that crown, winning 75 to the BJP%u2019s 74 seats. 

In comparison, the party of Nitish Kumar, the man set to be chief minister again, is a pale number 3, winning 43 seats, 28 less than it had in 2015.  

As leads and results rolled in on Tuesday and it became clear that the BJP was powering the NDA%u2019s performance, there was intense speculation on whether the party would exercise the option to dump or sideline Nitish Kumar and take the chief minister’s post. 

Critics have accused the BJP of tacitly supporting Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party to cut into Nitish Kumar’s votes. Chirag Paswan stomped out of the NDA just ahead of the elections, asserting his allegiance to the BJP but declaring a continued partnership with Nitish untenable. The LJP contested about 135 seats, mainly intending to play spoiler for Nitish Kumar. It could win only one seat but is seen to have spoilt the JDU%u2019s chances in quite a few. 

A few months ago, as the BJP went about meticulously planning its Bihar campaign, the party’s leaders in the state were pretty sure that this election would define the emergence of the BJP as a Bihar powerhouse. They reckoned that the BJP would withstand an anti-incumbency factor and the deep unpopularity that Nitish was seen to carry, to see the NDA through based on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s colossal popularity. 

They asserted that the BJP would honour the partnership and that Nitish, even if diminished, would be Chief Minister. They were also clear that this would be the last election that the two parties would contest together.

But the power shift does allow the BJP to demand a bigger role in governance at the very least.

The BJP-JDU relationship has not been the smoothest. A deep fracture came when Nitish Kumar pulled out of the NDA ahead of the 2014 general elections, protesting against the BJP’s move to project his bete noire Narendra Modi as the alliance’s candidate for Prime Minister. The parties contested the general elections separately. Modi swept the country. In Bihar, Nitish Kumar was severely punished by voters for his disloyalty. His party could win only 2 Lok Sabha seats. 

A humiliated Nitish then tied up with traditional rival Lalu Yadav and the Congress to form the Mahagathbandan, first testing waters with a by-election. In the 2015 assembly elections, allies Nitish and Lalu contested an equal  number of seats. Lalu’s RJD won more seats than the JDU, but Nitish retained his chief ministership. 

It was a bad marriage. The Nitish-Lalu misadventure ended when Nitish walked out of the alliance, and straight back into the BJP’s waiting arms in July 2017. Nitish Kumar switched partners without losing a single day’s pay as chief minister.  

Nitish Kumar seemed to have braced for a fall this time. Exit polls on Saturday, after the last round of voting in the Bihar elections, predicted an edge for the opposition Mahagathbandhan or alliance, now led by Lalu Yadav’s son Tejashwi Yadav. 

Two days before that Nitish had made an emotional election rally speech suggesting this was his last election. %u201CToday is the last day of campaigning and day after tomorrow is the election. This is my last election%u2026aant bhala to sab bhala (all well that ends well),%u201D Nitish Kumar said in Purnia district%u2019s Dhamdaha constituency. 

Read with the exit polls knell, it sounded like resignation, though some interpreted it as a last-ditch effort at an emotional appeal. 

This will be the seventh time that Nitish Kumar will take oath as Bihar%u2019s chief minister. Yes, he is back. Not quite the winner of the election, but he keeps his crown.