For Modi 3.0, ball in kingmakers’ court
Despite being NDA allies, and party leaders insisting that they would stand by the BJP, experts say that Naidu and Kumar hold all the cards
One man is 73 years old, the other 74. Their political journeys have clear differences. One has helmed one of India’s poorest states, and is credited with restoring a sense of law and order in a region fraught by social division. The other centred his politics in one of India’s most developed states, and helmed the development of Hyderabad, a glittering modern-day metropolis. One leader has remained immovable from the corridors of power, resisting the winds of change, bending always, but never breaking. The other was considered down and out for the count, but every political epitaph has been premature. Yet, Nitish Kumar and Chandrababu Naidu, regional satraps both, the first chief minister of Bihar and the second, to-be-CM of Andhra, are now kingmakers. With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) short of majority in Lok Sabha elections declared on Tuesday, no government can come to power without them.
In the run-up to the elections in Bihar, there was much conjecture around the future of chief minister Nitish Kumar. He first became the state’s chief minister in 2000, but his term lasted all of seven days. Five years later, in November 2005, he became chief minister again, part of an NDA alliance with the BJP as a partner. But come 2014, with Narendra Modi picked as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, and eager to protect a Muslim support base that had stayed loyal to him, Kumar exited the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). His JD(U) performed poorly in the general elections, and installed Jitan Ram Manjhi at the helm in Bihar, but ahead of the 2015 assembly elections, he was back in power. Since then, he quit the NDA and joined the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and then left them again for the NDA. In 2020, he left the NDA and joined hands with the RJD. And finally in 2022, left the RJD and joined the NDA again.
Through all of this time, and his many flip-flops, Kumar earned a reputation as an unreliable ally. And yet, as Tuesday showed, he has always retained the support of Bihar’s poorest—the Koeri Kurmis and the Extremely Backward Classes—a caste calculus he has assiduously nurtured. When the results trickled in, despite constant opposition attacks on his ostensibly fading health and incessant somersaults, his support remained steadfast. Even as the opposition made inroads in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, and faced with an enthusiastic RJD, the JD(U) won 12 of the 16 seats it contested, an even higher strike rate than its ally the BJP, which won 12 of 17.
JD(U) state president Umesh Kushwaha said, “It is the work of Nitish Kumar and the performance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that has got the thumbs up from the people in Bihar.”
Crucially, despite being an NDA ally, and party leaders insisting that he would now stand by the BJP, experts said that Kumar holds all the cards. To be sure, a day before results were announced, Kumar travelled to Delhi and met Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “The attacks on him over the last couple of years indicated that he remained important, as both the BJP and the RJD knew that without him they might find it difficult to sail through state’s triangular politics. He is crucial for both the BJP as well as the opposition and now can now manoeuvre things to his advantage. How he will behave, only time will tell,” political analyst DM Diwakar said.
1,500 kilometres away from Patna, in Hyderabad, 74-year old Chandrababu Naidu, once written off, has returned to centre-stage. In 2019, his Telugu Desam Party (TDP) won only 23 seats in the state assembly. Five years later, he is set to be chief minister again; his party winning 136 of the 144 it contested, and with his two allies—BJP and Pawan Kalya’s Jan Sena—the NDA won 163 of the state’s 175 seats. Importantly, the alliance won 21 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats with the TDP winning 16 on its own.
The alliance is key to his success; the BJP gave him national heft and the argument that the state would benefit from a friendly government at the centre. In Pawan Kalyan, he found an ally with a shared grievance with political treatment meted out by chief minister Jagan Mohan Reddy. Together, the two regional leaders formed a powerful alliance between communities, once warring but now united—the Kammas and the Kapus.
This leaves Naidu in a position that he is not unfamiliar with. “He was instrumental in installing three governments at the Centre – the first United Front government of H D Deve Gowda and later that of I K Gujral, followed by the National Democratic Alliance government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee twice,” said author and political analyst Sriram Karri.
One TDP leader said that Naidu was unlikely to waver, would stick by the BJP and has spoken to both Prime Minister Modi and union minister Amit Shah. “They have reportedly invited him to New Delhi on Wednesday,” the leader said.