Nitish is not Shinde and BJP knows it

Ever since elections to the 243 member Bihar assembly were announced on October 6, power corridors in New Delhi have been abuzz with questions about the future of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Ongoing speculations reached a crescendo this week when opposition Congress used a video clip of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP’s principal poll planner, to say: “Nitish nahi benenge CM, Amit Shah ne kar diya clear. (Nitish will not be CM, Shah has clarified).”

The X post from Congress Party’s official handle sent the BJP, the senior-most partner in the ruling NDA of Bihar, into a clarification spree.

Those distorting Amit Shah’s statement are misleading the people of India and of Bihar only to serve their vested political motives, said the BJP, senior most partner in the ruling National Democratic Alliance bloc of Bihar which also consists of Nitish led JD (U), Chirag Paswan led LJP Ram Vilas, Jitan Ram Majhi led Hindustani Awam Morcha and Upendra Kushwaha led RLM.

The BJP posted a parallel video of Amit Shah to counter the Congress narrative against of November polls.

“This is a tight slap in the faces of rumour mongers...find the whole truth here,” the video’s caption read.

The controversy about Nitish, 74, stemmed from an elaborate television statement Shah made this week about the CM’s role in state elections.

“The NDA is fighting Bihar elections under the leadership of Nitish Kumar and Nitish Kumar is leading our election. He is a committed socialist leader who has opposed the Congress from the start of his political career. He was a prominent leader of the Jayaprakash Narayan movement and fought against the Congress-imposed Emergency,” Shah said in initial remarks about Bihar CM.

It was the union home minister’s answer to a follow up question that caused the political storm. The question posed to him was — will Nitish be the CM of the coalition should the NDA win.

To this query, Shah’s stock answer was — “Elected MLAs of the coalition parties will first elect their respective leaders who will then assembly and decide the head of the next government.”

Though Shah also recalled the 2020 scenario where the BJP, despite winning more seats than Nitish’s party in the assembly polls offered the CM’s post to him, the opposition latched on to the former’s “elected MLAs will decide” take to project a scenario of NDA without Nitish as the leader.

Senior Congress leaders privately continue to maintain that Nitish would meet the same fate as former Maharashtra CM and Shiv Sena president Eknath Shinde who was replaced with Devendra Fadnavis after the BJP registered an emphatic win in the 2024 state polls.

They further cite BJP’s reluctance to offer CM-ship to erstwhile Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray as the reason behind the demise of a 29 year old pact between the pro Hindutva partners.

But BJP strategists firmly dismiss any comparisons of Nitish Kumar with Shinde or Uddhav. These, they insist, are misplaced and far fetched.

To make the case, these leaders speak of Nitish’s indispensability to state politics, notwithstanding the number of seats JD (U) wins.

Not only has Nitish successfully crafted and nurtured a non-Yadav OBC vote base as an effective and lasting counter to RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s public appeal in Bihar, he has also emerged as the leader of the caste census pitch apart from an early champion of women’s rights and empowerment in the eastern state.

Himself a Kurmi, a minority non-Yadav OBC group with just 3 % population in the state, Nitish has stitched a rainbow coalition of support groups within the backwards classes.

This coalition includes the Kushwahas, state’s 36 % extremely backward classes commonly described as Maha Dalits and women’s vote on account of his early support schemes for state’s girl children who have now evolved into a considerable constituency.

It is these advantages that place Nitish way above any other state stalwart in cold political calculus and the reason why Prime Minister Narendra Modi insisted he stayed CM even after the BJP won 74 seats in 2020 Bihar elections — way higher than JD (U)’s 43.

BJP old timers also point to a considerable give and take between the BJP and Nitish over all these years.

They remember how the BJP under LK Advani backed Nitish as the NDA’s Chief Ministerial face in the run up to the 2005 Bihar elections.

This despite George Fernandes, former Defence Minister and patriarch of Samata Party — JD (U)’s earlier version — throwing his weight behind Digvijay Singh, who was Minister of State in the AB Vajpayee led central government.

The BJP-JDU alliance of 2005 romped home to victory and Nitish became CM. The rest remains history.