With India out of sight, the CM chair is under danger from RJD

PATNA: Dreams may sometimes be harmful. For example, Bihar head Minister Nitish Kumar’s failed prime ministerial ambition has set off another storm in state politics, with the JD(U) head leaving the Grand Alliance to join the NDA. Because to RJD’s insistence on Tejashwi Yadav’s elevation to chief minister after this year’s Lok Sabha elections as part of the 2022 power-sharing agreement, Nitish faced a significant danger of losing its seat in government.

His most recent power play was just 17 months after his similarly impressive move, which on August 10, 2022, saw him quit the NDA and create a coalition government with the RJD, Congress, and CPI(ML).
Since Nitish convened a gathering of opposition parties in Patna on June 23 of last year and gathered together 15 leading opposition parties on a single platform, JD(U) has been referring to Nitish as the “prime minister of ideas,” a rather overt portrayal of him as the PM face of the opposition group.
The opposition then met three more times in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi, but they could not agree on naming Nitish—the mastermind of opposition unity—as the INDIA bloc’s convener. However, sources claim that Nitish lost patience when Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee suggested the name of Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge as the opposition bloc’s prime minister candidate, a move quickly endorsed by AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal. Many claim that was Nitish’s warning sign.
“Set apart from designating him as the face of the PM, Kharge was designated as its chairman, even as Nitish was granted the position as convener. That implied that Kharge would have made the final decisions and he would have just functioned as its convener in name. Political analyst D M Diwakar said on Sunday that Nitish was irritated by it.
However, RJD never stopped reminding him that, after the Lok Sabha elections, he had to give way to Tejashwi. During the first stage, Nitish had followed the plan and openly declared Lalu’s son to be his heir apparent. RJD was even more irate when he started to back up and establish himself as CM as events in the INDIA bloc were not going his way.
According to sources, extremists within the RJD ranks attempted to unseat Nitish’s MLAs as a result of this. It was the CM’s equivalent of the straw that broke the camel’s back, prompting him to approach the BJP about a reconciliation. Many have connected the about-turn to the removal of Rajiv Ranjan Singh “Lalan,” the party head who played a key role in the split with the BJP. Lalan has maintained that he left on his own initiative to run for reelection to the Lok Sabha from Munger.
The issue was further resolved by the near-unanimity inside JD(U) that a partnership with the well-liked Prime Minister Narendra Modi would benefit the party much more in the Lok Sabha elections than the INDIA grouping.
The only reason Nitish’s most recent flip appears better than his earlier ones is because he seemed to be taking his role as the leader of the opposition caucus seriously and kept saying that he wanted to see “India free from BJP.” His comment, “Jo 2014 me aaye the, kya veh 2024 me bhi aayenge (Those who came to power in 2014, will they return in 2024)?” became viral on August 10, 2022. This was the comment Nitish gave as he exited Raj Bhavan after his seventh oath of office as chief minister.
When the BJP rejected Nitish’s demand in 2013 that Modi, the Gujarat chief minister at the time, not be shown as the head of the campaign committee, Nitish responded in a similar way.
“Nitish is a political machiavellian, expert strategist, and craftsman. He doesn’t share authority with anybody, according to political analyst Prof. Nawal Kishore Choudhary. Additionally, he accused Congress of not closing the seat-sharing agreement with “due respect” and without any seriousness.