Nitish Kumar in the saddle 9th time in Bihar !

With the resignation of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the 17-month-old Grand Alliance Government in Bihar has come to an end. After he submitted resignation to the Governor, Rajendra Arlekar, Nitish Kumar spoke to the media and  gave the reason for his resignation. He is likely to take oath as Chief Minister by the evening. BJP President JP Nadda will attend the swearing-in. On the other hand, Lalu Prasad Yadav and now former DY CM Tejashwi Yadav, are continuously holding meetings with their leaders and MLAs.

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Previously served as the Chief Minister of Bihar from 2005 to 2014 and again from 2015 to 2017, Nitish Kumar resigned and rejoined the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). For the eighth time, Nitish Kumar became the Chief Minister of Bihar in 2022 with RJD support. He is now the longest-serving Chief Minister of Bihar.

On 17 May 2014, he resigned from the post of Chief Minister, taking responsibility for his party’s poor performance in the Lok Sabha General Election, 2014, and thereafter 68-year-old Jitan Ram Manjhi was sworn in as the 23rd Chief Minister of Bihar. It was Nitish Kumar who had offered the name of Jitan Ram Manjhi as the Chief Minister. However, he returned to office in February 2015 due to the political crisis in Bihar and won the Bihar Legislative Assembly Election of November 2015. He was elected as the National President of his party on 10 April 2016. In the upcoming election of 2019, many politicians Lalu Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, and others proposed him for the post of Prime Minister of India, however, he denied such aspirations.

On July 26, 2017, Nitish Kumar again resigned from the post of Chief Minister of Bihar due to differences between the coalition partner Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) due to the naming of Deputy Chief Minister and Lalu Prasad Yadav’s son Tejashwi Yadav in the FIR by the CBI. Hours later, he joined the NDA alliance and took oath as Chief Minister of Bihar again. After this, he again contested the elections in 2020 as part of the NDA alliance, but in 2022, he again separated from the NDA alliance and included his party in the RJD-Congress grand alliance and took oath as the Chief Minister again.

How many times has Nitish Kumar changed boats?

Notably, Nitish Kumar severed ties with the BJP in August 2022 and joined the grand alliance with the RJD. He was with the BJP in the state 2020 elections. Nitish Kumar is known for switching sides, and is called Paltu Ram by Lalu Yadav and his opponents.

Earlier In 1994, he broke ties with the then Janata Dal to form the Samata Party with George Fernandes. In 1996, he joined hands with the BJP and became a Minister in the cabinet of Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

In 2003, Nitish Kumar decided to merge his Samata Party with Janata Dal and the party became Janata Dal (United). In 2013, Nitish Kumar broke his 17-year-old alliance with the NDA in protest against Narendra Modi becoming the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate for 2014. For the 2015 elections, Nitish Kumar allied with RJD and Congress, which he broke in 2017 and returned to the NDA.

Will Nitish-Tejashwi face off in Bihar too?

There is suspense over the recent developments as to what is going to happen in the coming days in Bihar. In Bihar, RJD is looking weak in front of Nitish’s machinations. Tejashwi Yadav has also said that he will seek shelter of  public. This means that he is ready to sit in the opposition and will try to show that he’s been   betrayed by Nitish . RJD says that it has fulfilled its coalition dharma.

In Bihar, will the new government stray in  power for stability ?

Amid clarification  about the formation of a new government of the NDA in Bihar, leaders of the Janata Dal-United and the core committee of the BJP met at the residence of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar this morning. An important meeting will be held at Patna headquarters on Sunday. With this, speculations have intensified regarding the beginning of the countdown of the present ‘Grand Alliance’ government of the state.

From the post made by Rohini Acharya, daughter of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, on the social media platform ‘X’ and an advertisement printed with Tejashwi’s picture, it is now believed that RJD has started the countdown of the grand alliance government. In a way, it has accepted Tejashwi’s point and has started ‘branding’ Tejashwi by recalling the decisions taken during the tenure of this government as decisions taken by his youth leader. Appreciating the leader for fulfilling his promises, the advertisement published in the local newspaper reads, “Thank You Tejashwi! You said, you did it and you will continue to do so.”

Rohini said in one of her posts, “As long as we still have breath, our fight against communal forces continues…”

Earlier, RJD had written on ‘X’, “A people-dedicated ‘Mahagathbandhan’ government with positive development-oriented jobs that will end the negative, hopeless and egoistic politics in the state… whose every successful work has 100 percent imprint of Tejashwi Yadav ji… We cannot even think of toppling such a brilliant government which has transformed Bihar.”

Tagging this post of RJD, Rohini wrote on ‘X’, “This is the identity of Tejashwi that I have seen, the smile that has blossomed on the faces of lakhs of youth…”

In this sequence, an old video of Nitish Kumar went viral on social media, in which Nitish Kumar is seen saying that “he would like to die before joining NDA again”. Nitish had said in 2023,

“I would rather die than go with them (BJP). All these things are fake… They filed cases against Tejashwi and his father without any reason to bring me to their side.”

Are we going back to Aya Ram -Gaya Ram Days?

This episode of Bihar politics reminds us of Aya Ram-Gaya Ram days of late 1970′ and 1980s in Haryana and elsewhere.  Then the  senior Congress Leaders and CM Bhajan Lal had joined Janata Party taking all his MLAs into Janata Party. This may revive the old unholy era of Making -Breaking governments  like sand dunes of desert.                                       —(Editor-Subhash C Vatsain)