They say a lie has a glorious life, but not a long one. Turns out, the Deputy CM of Bihar did not realize this. With CBI and ED already having the family of Laloo Prasad Yadav on their radar for their illegal dealings in numerous domains, from real estate to fodder, the fall out amongst RJD and JDU was inevitable.
After an insignificant press conference earlier today, Laloo Prasad Yadav went all defensive, blaming the misunderstanding in his political family on the media and BJP. Merely a few minutes later, news reports emerged of Nitish Kumar, the former CM of Bihar, visiting the governor to offer his resignation, and he did. The Titanic of Grand Alliance sank even before it could taste the waves, and this resignation isn’t about Bihar alone, but about India as a whole.
Only a few days ago, liberal fronts and newspapers loyal to the Congress ranted about how Sonia Gandhi had ensured peace between Laloo Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar. This wasn’t about the coalition alone, but about the power Sonia Gandhi and Congress yielded in the Indian Political spectrum, even when they were reduced to a mere 44 seats in the Lok Sabha.
From ‘Award Wapsi’ to Beef, and from Cow Vigilantes to Intolerance, Congress had played every trump card to demean Modi. The ploy did work in the Bihar State elections, but fortunately, for India, NDA learned quickly from its mistakes and came back strongly earlier this year to win Uttar Pradesh along with other states.
Rattled, Mamata Banerjee, Laloo Prasad Yadav, and other Congress leaders pondered over the realization that they had nothing to counter the Modi phenomenon, except the hope of a Grand Alliance. Meetings happened, editorials and opinion pieces about a possible alliance in 2019 were written, and as the alliance led by a feeble Sonia Gandhi prepared itself for 2019, projecting Nitish Kumar as the second remote control of the Congress after Dr. Manmohan Singh, reports of corruption within the Laloo Prasad Yadav family surfaced.
Call it timing or swift justice, Nitish Kumar was now seen as a man leading a government plagued with a corrupt deputy CM, MLAs, and other leaders, and a man whose entire political career was structured around clean and corruption-free governance, the efforts and political momentum constructed in years was too big a price for a rogue, uneducated, and corrupt deputy CM. Tejashwi Yadav, clearly misdirected, chose to believe that money could buy him a political career, like it bought him an IPL ticket.
The downfall of the Bihar government isn’t that of JDU-RJD alone, but is another dent in the already damaged armor of the Congress, for unlike earlier, the word of Sonia Gandhi cannot save a State Government, let alone bringing ten different heads from different political fronts to take on the Ram of Indian Politics in 2019. The Grand Alliance has not only become a distant dream in terms of amalgamation, but also sustainability. A small alliance couldn’t run a state for more than 2-years, how on Earth is a Grand Alliance going to run the entire country?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who probably saw this coming, quickly extended his support to Nitish Kumar. BJP and Nitish Kumar came together to give Bihar’s politics a fresh start, the kind it deserves.
For the ones who returned their awards, wrote long excruciating opinion pieces about Bihar’s elections being the end of Modi wave, I have only one question; how stupendously stupid do you feel right now?
Needless to say, this political earthquake will have implications for the Congress along with the likes of Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal (who was last seen hugging Laloo Prasad Yadav), but for the people of Bihar, and not only Bihar, but the entire population of India, it reasserts the centuries old fact that evil might have a great run for a while, but at last, it’s the good that triumphs.
The pace at which it happened is astounding. From Modi’s tweet support to Nitish Kumar to Nitish Kumar thanking him to late night show of strength to an early oath. Nitish Kumar was the CM yesterday, he is the CM Today but in 15 hours the biggest political restructuring of this decade was complete. And it would be naïve to think that Modi and Amit Shah weren’t at the backend of it.
Apparently, Bihar will be celebrating Vijay-Dashami a little early this year.