Patna: It was not very long ago when everyone wished to have friendship with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. He had emerged as the darling of political parties in the country for his repeated spectacular performances in elections in his home state. Well, winning 32 seats out of state's total share of 40 Lok Sabha seats in the last 2009 parliamentary elections and then getting the historic three-forth mandate in the 2010 assembly polls when the ruling NDA notched a spectacular tally of 206 seats in the 243-member Bihar assembly was no mean achievement.
Nitish who came to power after November 2005 polls riding on the strong anti-Lalu waves had his charisma till 16 June 2013-the day when he announced to break his party's long-standing alliance with the BJP with whose support he had come to power in Bihar. Post-NDA split, however, this seems to be a different story for Nitish as just no party willing to ally with him.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. AFP
Their abhorrence for Nitish emanates from the fact that there has been a sharp fall in the popularity graph of the chief minister in recent months as also the loosening grip of the Nitish Kumar government over the state administration, resulting in at least two terrorist attacks in state which was never reported earlier and daredevil attacks on passengers trains by the Maoists. Also, they feel Nitish, as such, has no vote-bank of his own which means going with his Janata Dal (United) may not be a very big idea for them in any way!
This became amply clear a couple of days back when a non-existent Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM) of Babulal Marandi—the first chief minister of Jharkhand—walked out of its promise to enter into alliance with the JD(U) and fight elections together in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, barely a fortnight after they had agreed to work together in Bihar and Jharkhand.
"We will not have any electoral alliance with the JD(U) for the coming Lok Sabha polls. We will contest all 14 Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand. Also we don't have any plan to field candidates in Bihar," JVM chief Marandi clarified after two-day party meeting on 4 January, adding he had only discussions with the Bihar chief minister over the possibility of anti-Congress and anti-BJP forces aligning together but not "seat sharing".
The volte face comes barely a fortnight after Marandi himself made declaration of "working together with the JD(U)" in the twin states after a formal meeting with Nitish in New Delhi on the eve of Christmas on 24 December. The meeting was held at the residence of KC Tyagi, JD(U) MP and party's national spokesman, in the presence of JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav. "The JVM and JD(U) will work together in Bihar and Jharkhand to prevent the divisive forces trying to split the society. We are trying to have the consent of the non-Congress and non-BJP parties aligning together and we hope to have a good result," was how Marandi had told the media then.
In the same way, the Congress which earlier was conspicuous by its willingness to ally with Nitish in Bihar to reap maximum poll harvest too has now dragged its feet, and is rather working on its plan to seal an electoral deal with the now more powerful-looking Rashtriya Janata Dal of Lalu Prasad and Lok Janshkti Party of Ram Vilas Paswan.
The bonhomie between Nitish and the Congress became only too apparent when the UPA government after initial toughening of stand finally sanctioned two central universities at Motihari and Gaya in Bihar as the chief minister reciprocated by lending his party's support to UPA presidential nominee
Pranab Mukherjee. Again, the Centre formed the
Raghuram Rajan committee to look into Bihar chief minister's demand of granting special category status to Bihar. Subsequently, the committee in its report submitted to the government in September last made a case for ending the "special category" criteria for providing additional assistance to the poorer states while suggesting a new matrix to decide on which states should get on maximum financial assistance from the Centre. Nitish was quick to welcome the committee report, describing as a "victory for Bihar".
As of now though, there seems no love lost between the Nitish and the Congress. While the Congress-led UPA government is not out hitting out at the ruling JD(U) for the terrorists attacks in Bihar saying the state government was well alerted over the attacks and has rapped Bihar for allegedly failing to control Maoist activities in the state while accusing Bihar government of being "soft towards the rebels", Nitish's JD(U) has gone on strongly attacking the Congress at its state-wide "Sankalp rallies" for its failure to grant "Special Category " status to Bihar. Nitish has now vowed to make special category issue as his election issue in the coming polls, indicating the level of prevailing bitterness between the two parties right now.
The LJP of Ram Vilas Paswan too initially appeared willing to tie up with Nitish's party after differences cropped up with the RJD when Lalu refused to spare good number of seats for his ally this time keeping in view its performance. In the last Lok Sabha polls when the LJP failed to open its account in Bihar despite it contested 12 seats in alliance with the RJD; even party chief Paswan himself lost the elections. But as sourness between the LJP and RJD grew, Paswan looked opening up channels with its old foe, the JD-U which only warmly welcomed the gestures. At one point of time, the JD(U) even agreed to offer respectable number of seats for Paswan's party as things turn up now, LJP is now not willing to stitch up alliance with the JD(U) apprehending its prospects may suffer baldy given the strong anti-incumbency wave blowing in favour of the ruling party.
Why no party wants to ally with Nitish, experts say, is that his JD(U) minus BJP is a very weak force in Bihar today. According to the experts, the JD(U), as such, does not have its own votes, experts little over 2 percent votes Kurmis in the caste-ridden Bihar where everything is decided by the caste angle. If Nitish was able to make spectacular performances in the last two elections, it was mainly because JD(U) had fought elections together in alliance with the BJP which has a strong support votes in upper castes.
Analysts say the Nitish also got the backing of the floating voters, such as extremely backward castes and Dalits since he led a formidable winning alliance but now these votes may not go to him especially in the light of recent acquittal of all the accused in at least four massacres, such as Laxmanpur-Bathe, Bathni Tola, Miyanpur and Nagri. In all these massacres, the victims were the Dalits. Strangely, Nitish claimed to have carved out a space among this Dalit community. The revival of RJD post conviction of Lalu in the fodder scam seems to have further made the situation difficult for Nitish as a message has got conveyed in the masses that Lalu has become a victim of politics.
