It’s advantage BJP not only in Bihar, but across nation

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 27

Within 12 hours of his resignation, Nitish Kumar is back in the saddle as the Bihar Chief Minister—this time with the BJP help.

Indications are that the JD-U might also get representation in the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Council of Ministers in the next expansion as a special gesture for his “fight against corruption”.

However, the biggest beneficiary of Nitish’s “ghar wapsi”, executed to perfection by PM Modi and party chief Amit Shah, may be the saffron party itself.

Debunking allegations of “opportunistic politics”, BJP leaders claim “they had nothing to do” with the Mahagathbandhan split. They are supporting Nitish for “stability and development of Bihar”, they maintain.

In fact, saffron managers were worried about the possibility of any rapprochement between Nitish and Lalu. Moreover, the Mahagathbandhan split has also heralded the end of prime ministerial ambitions of Nitish, if any. It is also the end of hopes for a plausible “anti-Modi Mahagathbandhan” with him as the pivot.

Nitish’s return to the NDA is the political endorsement the BJP had been looking for in the run-up to the 2019 General Election. He was among the few Opposition leaders who could have actually challenged Modi.

As a BJP leader says: “Perhaps Nitish realised that anti-Modism is no longer the binding force in the country. He also seems to have accepted that his future lies in Bihar.”

Whether Nitish had remained with the “corrupt” RJD or embraced “communal” BJP, eventually it is he who seems to have compromised with his ideology. The RJD and the Congress believe he will have to pay for it the next time he goes to the people for votes.