The current Chief Minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar is perhaps the most clever leader in the country because without having a significant voter base he has been ruling the state for more than a decade. He is a much better psephologist than top professionals like Yogendra Yadav because he has always been in alliance with the winning party. His party lost every by poll it contested against Lalu Prasad Yadav led RJD after he broke alliance with the Mahagathbandhan. He is well aware that the BJP will give his party few seats if they go together in 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The JD(U) despite being in power since last decade does not have the ability to win elections on its own because it is dependent on vote transfer of its alliance partners to perform well in elections.
On Sunday, the JD(U) core committee met in Patna and unilaterally announced that Nitish Kumar is the face of NDA in Bihar, reminding its partner that his party is the largest constituent of the coalition. In the 2015 elections, his party won 71 seats against the BJP’s 53 seats. His assertion of self-importance is being seen as a ploy to put pressure on the BJP to divvy up the 40 Lok Sabha seats to the JD(U)’s satisfaction. This was seen as a turbulence in the alliance but Nitish Kumar came out bashing dynastic politics to damage control done by his party members. He said “Today, youths do not want to enter into the field of politics with their own capabilities, these days, people are coming in and getting ahead in politics because of their families”, attacking RJD and Congress and therefore reaffirming his alliance with the BJP. On the question of current political scenario in Bihar, he refrained from making any direct statement and said “People are asking me to say about the current situation prevailing in Bihar. I don’t know what they want to hear. I always keep on saying things to make this democracy stronger. We have been doing work for the public”.
The decision of Nitish Kumar to attack RJD and the Congress clearly indicates that his party announcing him to be the face of NDA was just a ploy to get an upper hand in the negotiation of the seats. He is very well aware that the option to join Mahagathbandhan is no longer left to him because RJD itself is not willing to ally with the JD(U). The reason behind RJD’s unwillingness is they have defeated them in every bypoll easily. So the BJP is the last resort for the JD(U). In 2014 Lok Sabha elections when the BJP went without the JD(U), it won 22 seats and its allies won 9 more seats, taking NDA’s tally to 31. Moreover, the BJP has the largest vote share in Bihar with 24.4 percent, a 7.94% increase over the last election. The JD(U) could win only two seats on its own and the vote share was just 15.8 percent, and a decline of 8.24 percent over the last election, therefore it is very clear that the party does not have ability to win elections alone.
The Shiv Sena tried to push Uddhav Thackeray as the face of the NDA in Maharashtra with the campaign slogan ‘Utha Maharashtra‘ (Wake up, Maharashtra). The outcome was not what Uddhav expected , in fact they went their separate ways, Devendra Fadnavis came into the picture, and the rest is history. Modi-Shah duo’s aggressive politics first reduced him to play second fiddle in the alliance, and now Fadnavis’ political acumen is pushing him to oblivion.