Nitish Kumar, who faces a floor test on Wednesday, is no stranger to the process. For every time the Bihar chief minister has switched partners, he has needed to prove that he has the backing of a majority of the members in the state assembly. After yet another swap earlier this month, he will seek a vote of confidence on the floor of the house as it convenes for a special session. He has the numbers.
Nitish Kumar has managed to serve as Bihar’s Chief Minister since 2005 – save a nine-month gap when he appointed a proxy who went rogue. That has meant considerable political juggling.
A floor test requires the Chief Minister to seek on the floor of the state legislative assembly (or the Prime Minister in the Indian Parliament) a vote of confidence among the members present and voting. A majority voting in favour means a win. Here’s a look at Nitish Kumar’s floor test experiences:
1) March 2000: Nitish Kumar, then in the Samata Party and a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government at the Centre, was sent to Bihar to be Chief Minister. No party or alliance had got a clear majority in the state assembly elections and the governor, VC Pande, invited the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to form the government. The NDA had won a total 151 seats. They needed 163 for a majority. This was before Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar, and the state had 324 assembly seats.
Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) was the single largest party with 124 seats; his communist allies had won a handful. Lalu claimed he had the support of the Congress’s 23 MLAs, which would take his alliance’s tally to 159 seats. He argued that his alliance should’ve been given the first shot at government formation.
Nitish Kumar’s first stint as Bihar’s chief minister was seven days long. He took oath on March 3, 2000. He resigned on March 10, ahead of the floor test. He had been unable to break the Congress, which supported Lalu en masse. On March 11, Lalu’s wife Rabri Devi returned to the office of Bihar chief minister.
2) June 2013: Nitish Kumar, now in the Janata Dal United (JDU), and the BJP won the 2005 Bihar assembly elections and this time he was chief minister for a full five-year term. The alliance returned to power in the 2010 elections as well, but in 2013, hit a roadblock. Nitish Kumar, with national ambitions of his own, found it untenable that the BJP was positioning Narendra Modi for Prime Minister in the 2014 general elections and decided to dissolve the partnership.
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On June 19, 2013, Nitish Kumar won a vote of confidence, backed by the Congress.126 MLAs voted for Nitish Kumar. 24, including 22 of the RJD, voted against. The BJP walked out before the vote.
3) March 2015: Nitish Kumar resigned as Bihar chief minister in May 2014, positioning it as an act of self-flagellation for the debacle that was his party’s performance in the national elections held that year. He was newly separated from the BJP and eager for brownie points. In his stead, Nitish Kumar installed a man called Jitan Ram Manjhi, the big highlight on whose resume was that he was loyal to Nitish Kumar.
Manjhi was intended to be a puppet who would keep the chief minister’s seat warm till his leader ended his self-imposed exile. But Jitan Ram Manjhi had other plans. When the Janata Dal United (JDU) asked him to step down and make way for Nitish Kumar, Manjhi refused. The JDU threw Manjhi out and he had to resign on February 20, 2015. Nitish Kumar took oath two days later, and on March 11 that year, won a trust vote with the support of Lalu Yadav’s RJD and its allies like the Congress.
Score: 140 for Nitish Kumar, 0 against. The BJP walked out before the vote. Jitan Ram Manjhi absented himself too. Nitish needed only 117 votes with the effective strength of the 243-member house reduced to 233.
4) July 2017: Nitish Kumar’s strategic partnership with Lalu and Co paid rich dividends in the Bihar elections of November 2015 and he was back as chief minister. But only a year and a half after the big win Nitish Kumar decided he needed a reset.
He cited allegations of corruption against Lalu’s son Tejashwi Yadav, his deputy chief minister, to dissolve that partnership and walked back into the waiting arms of old ally, the BJP. He resigned on 26 July 2017 and was back in the chief minister’s chair within a few hours.
Two days later, Nitish Kumar sailed through a floor test, backed by the BJP. 131 MLAs voted in favour of Nitish Kumar, 108 voted against.
5) August 2022: Nitish Kumar and the BJP stormed back to power in Bihar in the November 2020 assembly elections. But the dynamics of the relationship had changed. The BJP won many more seats than Nitish Kumar. Though it honoured the pre-election decision that Nitish Kumar would be chief minister if the alliance won, it also made it clear that it was now the senior partner.
After months of appearing on the verge of divorce, Nitish Kumar finally called it quits earlier this month. Lalu Yadav’s party was waiting with letters of support. On August 10 Nitish Kumar took oath again, for the eighth time in less than 23 years.
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On Wednesday he will seek a confidence vote to prove he has the majority he needs. Nitish Kumar has the support of 165 MLAs from seven parties, He needs 121 to win, with the effective strength of the house down to 242.
Nitish Kumar’s side has moved a no-confidence vote against the Speaker of the state assembly, Vijay Kumar Sinha, who is from the BJP. This is to ensure that Sinha does not preside over the special assembly session called to allow the trust vote.
The RJD has demanded that Sinha make “an honourable exit” and resign. Sinha has said he will not quit.