Nitish Kumar: Master of alliances who ruled Bihar without majority
Patna: Nitish Kumar may well go down in history as an astute politician who managed to occupy the post of Bihar Chief Minister for longer than all his predecessors, despite his JD(U) never winning a majority in the state assembly.
Ironically, though, a section of his die-hard supporters sees the canny leader as a victim of palace intrigue, even as his opponents insist that he has been done in by rank opportunism.
The remarks of Madan Sahni, the minister for social welfare and an old JD(U) hand, summed up the sentiment within the party.
“We are stunned to see whatever is happening. It is hard to believe that this could have been Nitish Kumar’s own decision,” said Sahni, expressing disbelief over the JD(U) supremo’s “long-standing wish” of representing “both Houses of Parliament and state legislature”, which he seeks to fulfil by getting elected to the Rajya Sabha in the ongoing biennial elections.
JD(U) workers, who have been forbidden by police from approaching the chief minister’s official residence, vented their ire by indulging in vandalism at the party office, refusing to believe that their leader, who had once been seen as a “Prime Minister material” by even admirers in BJP like late Sushil Kumar Modi, would agree to “such a disgraceful exit”.
RJD working president Tejashwi Yadav, his former deputy who is currently the leader of the opposition, said, “BJP has done a Maharashtra in Bihar. But Nitish Kumar has only himself to blame. While in alliance, we supported him as Chief
Minister despite having more MLAs, but he chose to walk away on two occasions.”
The JD(U) supremo, who turned 75 last week, however, has much to look back on with satisfaction. Having started off as a politically inclined engineering student in the 1970s, he cut his teeth in the “JP movement” launched by legendary socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan. Electoral success eluded him till 1985, when he won the Harnaut assembly seat in his home district of Nalanda.
Four years later, he was in Parliament, as the MP from Barh, and the “rise of the OBCs” that Mandal signified, earned him a berth in the ministry headed by VP Singh.
Kumar broke away from Janata Dal in 1995, uneasy with the growing clout of his old associate Lalu Prasad, Yadav’s father and the then CM of Bihar, who was attaining a cult-like status for boldly championing Mandal and arresting BJP patriarch Lal Krishna Advani, halting the “Ram Rath Yatra” in its tracks.
