Nitish takes oath as Bihar CM again, with support from BJP
Nitish Kumar took oath as Bihar's chief minister for the ninth time, severing ties with the Grand Alliance and joining hands with the BJP.
Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar took oath as Bihar’s chief minister for the ninth time on Sunday after severing ties with the Grand Alliance and joining hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a dramatic development that caps weeks of fevered speculation and tilts the scales against the Opposition in one of India’s largest states.
Kumar began the day with a meeting of all 45 legislators of his party, then drove to Raj Bhavan to tender his resignation and announce the end of the 17-month-old coalition government run by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Janata Dal (United), Congress and Left parties. He ended the day with a swearing-in ceremony for the third time in four years, and ninth since 2005.
“You people know that I believe in work, and this will continue. I will keep working for the overall development of the state,” Kumar said after being sworn in.
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Along with Kumar, two deputy chief ministers from the BJP, the larger alliance partner, were sworn in. They were Samrat Choudhary, who was the party’s state president, and Vijay Sinha, an upper-caste leader who was leader of opposition in the Bihar assembly.
BJP chief JP Nadda welcomed Kumar’s return.
“We are happy to have him back. Bihar has enjoyed stability whenever we have shared power. Things have looked up, be it infrastructure or law and order,” he said.
The RJD, which joined hands with Kumar in August 2022, hit out at the JD(U) chief and claimed credit for the work done by the government in the last 17 months.
Former Bihar deputy chief minister and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav called Kumar “a tired CM”. “Khel abhi shuru hui hai, khel abhi baki hain (the game has just begun, it’s not over yet). I can give you in writing that the JDU party will be finished in 2024. The public is with us...,” he said.
The JD(U) has 45 members in the 243-member Bihar assembly and the BJP has 78. A party or a grouping needs 122 lawmakers to form the government. The RJD, Congress, and Left parties have 114 lawmakers. The RJD is the single-largest party with 79 lawmakers.
In 2005, Kumar formed his first government in alliance with the BJP. He snapped ties in 2013, fought the 2014 Lok Sabha polls alone and the 2015 assembly elections in alliance with the RJD. He returned to the NDA in 2017. The JD(U) contested the 2019 national polls and 2020 Bihar elections as part of the BJP-led grouping. In 2022, Kumar quit the NDA to form the government again with the RJD, Congress, and Left parties.
The new government is likely to have three ministers from the BJP, the larger partner in the alliance, and three from the JD(U).
“I was with them (NDA) earlier, too. We went on different paths, but now we are together and will remain so... I came back to where I was (NDA), and now there is no question of going anywhere else,” Kumar, who is Bihar’s longest-serving CM, said on Sunday evening.
The political upheaval in the state just months ahead of the Lok Sabha tilts the scales in favour of the NDA, which swept 39 out of the 40 seats in Bihar in the 2019 polls. It also caps a remarkable few months that saw Kumar lurch from becoming one of the people bringing together the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) to becoming the NDA’s second-largest constituent.
The timing of these moves is crucial. On Monday, Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra is scheduled to enter Bihar and the Congress had planned a show of strength with all members of the ruling alliance. Now, it will coincide with the collapse of the party’s coalition government in yet another heartland state. With this, outside Himachal Pradesh, the Congress has been squeezed out of power in northern India.
The shift is a shot in the arm for the BJP, which can now hope to repeat its impressive performance in the 2019 polls again. It also gains an important, though unreliable in the past, ally.
For the Opposition INDIA bloc, this is yet another setback after West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced that she will fight in West Bengal alone and the Aam Aadmi Party said it will contest all 13 seats in Punjab. It also deals a serious blow to INDIA’s core promise of nationwide caste census, given that Kumar was the key architect of Bihar’s landmark caste survey that resulted in the state hiking quotas to 75% last year.
A key reason for Kumar’s unhappiness could be the evolving dynamics in the INDIA bloc. At a meeting of the alliance on December 19, 2023, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee did not support Kumar as the convener when the Congress broached the subject, while there was unanimity on making Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge the chairman of the bloc.
The question of convener was kept in abeyance and RJD chief Lalu Prasad and his son Tejashwi Yadav were asked to keep Kumar happy, but efforts weren’t successful.
“Congress wanted to steal the leadership of the INDIA alliance. In the meeting that took place on December 19, through a conspiracy, to get the leadership of INDIA alliance, Mallikarjun Kharge’s name was proposed (as PM face)… earlier, in the meeting that took place in Mumbai, it was unanimously decided that without any PM face, INDIA will work,” JD(U) spokesperson KC Tyagi said.
He also pointed to delayed seat-sharing talks, a reason first cited by Banerjee to pull out of negotiations in West Bengal. “Congress kept dragging the seat sharing, we kept saying that seat sharing needs to happen immediately... INDIA lacked plans to fight against BJP,” Tyagi said.
Speculation peaked when then JD(U) chief Rajiv Ranjan Singh, or Lallan Singh, resigned on December 26 last year and the party chose Kumar to replace him. Lallan Singh was seen growing close to RJD patriarch Lalu Prasad, and Kumar was upset at what he saw as an effort by the RJD to make inroads into the JD(U), said people aware of developments.
Congress chief and INDIA chairperson Mallikarjun Kharge alluded to Kumar’s history of breaking alliances and said he already knew that the JD(U) chief was preparing to shift sides.
“Earlier he and us were fighting together. When I talked to Lalu [Prasad] Ji and Tejashwi [Yadav], they also said that Nitish is going. Today that came true. There are many people in the country like ‘aaya Ram, gaya Ram’,” he said.
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