Bihar braces for first BJP-led govt, Nitish likely to resign after last meeting of cabinet on Apr 14

Patna: The ball was set rolling on Monday in Bihar for the formation of a new, BJP-led government, with the ruling NDA scheduling its meeting on Tuesday when legislators will elect the successor to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

“Tomorrow, the BJP legislature party meeting will be held at the party office at 2 pm. This will be followed by a meeting of the NDA legislators, at the central hall of the assembly, at 4 pm,” state BJP president Sanjay Saraogi said.

He said Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, whom the BJP parliamentary board has appointed as “central observer” for the election of its legislature party leader, will be flying down to the state capital for the purpose.

Nitish Kumar, who heads the JD(U), has convened his last cabinet meeting on Tuesday at 11 am, when he is likely to make a formal announcement of his decision to step down, before heading to the Lok Bhawan for submitting his resignation.

“It is a constitutional requirement. The chief minister informs his colleagues about his decision to dissolve the cabinet and goes to the Governor with the recommendation,” said Dilip Jaiswal, minister and former Bihar BJP president.

Kumar, the state’s longest-serving CM, took all by surprise last month when he announced that he was seeking election to the Rajya Sabha. The JD(U) supremo, who turned 75 recently, had led the NDA to a resounding victory in the assembly polls held in November last year.

Speculations are rife that Kumar could be succeeded by his deputy Samrat Choudhary, son of his former close aide Shakuni Choudhary, who joined the BJP in 2017 after spending nearly two decades in the RJD, the saffron party’s principal rival in Bihar.

Party leaders have been tight-lipped on the issue but Samrat Choudhary, who represents the Tarapur assembly seat, has been hogging much limelight, with top leaders and officials making a beeline to his residence, adjacent to the CM House.

Those visiting his 5, Desh Ratna Marg residence on Monday included Saraogi and JD(U) national working president Sanjay Kumar Jha. Late in the afternoon, a car from the Lok Bhavan, with an official of the Governor’s secretariat seated inside, was also seen entering the premises.

Although Choudhary is relatively new to the BJP, he is said to fit the bill because he enjoys the confidence of Nitish Kumar, whose party is a key NDA partner.

Kumar, a product of the Mandal churn like his arch rival Lalu Prasad, the RJD president, has for decades cultivated the ‘Luv Kush’ combine, a short-hand for Koeris and Kurmis, to take on his adversary’s ‘MY’ (Muslims and Yadavs) support base.

Choudhary, whom Union Home Minister Amit Shah had famously promised to make “a big man” during assembly poll campaign, is a Koeri, the second-most populous OBC group in Bihar after the Yadavs.

The JD(U), which has 85 MLAs in the 243-strong assembly, just four less than the BJP’s tally, seems to have reconciled itself to the writing on the wall.

Taking a cue from the supremo, whose belongings are being shifted to a government bungalow not far away from 1, Anney Marg, the CM’s official residence, JD(U) workers were seen pulling down posters installed at the party office, which had been put up at the time of elections and proudly declared “pachis se tees, phir se Nitish” (from 2025-30, it will be Nitish again).

JD(U) workers are also hoping that Nitish Kumar’s son Nishant, who joined the party only last month, will be inducted in the new cabinet, preferably as a Deputy CM, “to keep our flag aflutter”.

It will be the first opportunity for the BJP to have its “own chief minister” in Bihar, which has, so far, been the only state in the Hindi heartland where the seat of power has eluded the party.

Party leaders not comfortable with Choudhary insist that there were many others who fit the bill, including Nityanand Rai, the Union Minister of State for Home who, unlike Choudhary, is rooted in the Sangh.

They also point towards the party’s top leadership springing a surprise, as has been seen in BJP-ruled states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Odisha where less fancied persons were chosen for the top job.

Actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha, a Trinamool Congress MP who spent nearly three decades in the BJP, had recently said, while commenting on the political situation in Bihar that "we have plenty of deserving people here but we must be beware of a baba who may arrive with a parchi".

The allusion was to Rajasthan, where Bhajan Lal Sharma was named the chief minister two years ago at a legislature party meeting, where Defence Minister Rajnath Singh was seen on camera taking out a piece of paper with the name of the first-term MLA written on it.