There was a time when Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had aspirations to become the Prime Minister of India. To realize his dreams, he went to great lengths to diss BJP by sending signals every now and then that Narendra Modi shouldn’t be made the PM candidate and even severed the alliance at the national level to carve a separate identity for himself. However, some six-seven years down the line, Nitish Kumar’s ambitions have come to naught but his tendency to overestimate his party’s stature hasn’t gone away. According to news reports, six JDU MLAs have shifted their allegiances to the ruling BJP in the northeast state of Arunachal Pradesh.
The JD(U) MLAs who switched sides are Talem Taboh from Rumgong Assembly Constituency, Hayeng Mangfi (Chayang Tajo), Jikke Tako (Tali), Dorjee Wangdi Kharma (Kalaktang), Dongru Siongju (Bomdila) and Kanggong Taku from Mariyang-Geku constituency.
“We have accepted their letters conveying the intention to join the party,” remarked BJP’s Arunachal Pradesh president B R Waghe on the developments.
JDU had won seven of the 15 seats it contested in the 2019 assembly elections, and emerged as the second-largest party after the BJP, which had bagged 41 seats. JDU must have been buoyed by the performance but the lack of able leadership at the top and the age-old habit of JDU’s high command of not allowing the party leaders to come to the top resulted in the MLAs ditching their own party.
JDU is working along with BJP in Bihar where Nitish has been crowned as the fourth-time CM. But this is the extent of friendship between the two parties. JDU has fought in states like Karnataka, Gujarat, Delhi, and even Jharkhand without a tie-up with the BJP.
The jumping from the sinking ship of JDU by the 6 MLAs is a cold-blooded warning by BJP to Kumar that it should focus on its work rather than meddling in BJP’s affairs.
As reported by TFI earlier, bruised by the defeat handed to JDU in the Bihar Assembly elections, the four-time CM was planning to jump into the West Bengal elections slated to be held in less than six months to heal his fragile ego. JDU is planning to contest elections on 70-odd seats and the state unit has got the nod of party supremo Nitish Kumar to chalk out the strategy.
Read more: To seek his revenge over Bihar, Nitish Kumar is all set to challenge BJP in Bengal. A silly move
Kumar is clearly seeking his revenge from the BJP, however, just like Bihar, his stars seem to have not aligned in his favour. The contest is extraordinarily tight between BJP and TMC, with the former edging the latter if the Tsunami rallies of Union Home Minister Amit Shah are any indication.
JDU stands no chance but it is looking to cash-in on every opportunity to go toe to toe with BJP, even though the end result is inevitably JDU losing its election deposits. Seemingly in the home stretch of his political career, Nitish Kumar should try and focus on developing Bihar so that he can sign off with a decent legacy. However, at the moment, he is more interested in proving himself and his party as a big player, and that is becoming his undoing, repeatedly.