Bihar CM Nitish Kumar Is Building Bridges With Friends And Foes To Recover Lost Ground

Relegated to playing second fiddle in an alliance he once dominated with brute force in Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has set out to woo back old friends and foes alike, rewarding them suitably in his bid to rebuild his party and to regain lost clout within the NDA.

Former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha, one of the bitterest critics of Nitish in recent years, merged his Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) with Janata Dal-United, putting an end to days of speculation. Soon after, he was made an MLA and is now poised to become a Cabinet minister in the Nitish government.

It is Homecoming 2.O for Kushwaha, who had quit the JD-U twice in the past, accusing Nitish of working like an autocrat on both occasions. But it was all forgotten and forgiven last weekend, as he reposed unflinching faith in Nitish’s leadership with a resolve to make JD-U the number one party in the state.

Mighty pleased with Kushwaha’s comeback, Nitish earlier made him the chairman of the JD-U parliamentary board, a move that is bound to cause heartburns beyond his party.

The BJP, Nitish’s ally, may have a reason to be not so pleased with the latest developments since Kushwaha had chosen to walk out on the NDA and the Narendra Modi government in a huff in 2017. But Nitish and Kushwaha have their own reason to join forces, as the merger is mutually beneficial for both the leaders, who have been nursing their wounds since the last Assembly polls.

In November 2020, Nitish did become the chief minister but his party was reduced to only 43 seats, 31 less than BJP, which had remained a junior partner since 2005. It diminished Nitish’s clout and bargaining power within NDA to a great extent. Kushwaha’s outfit fared worse, as it failed to win any seat despite forging an alliance with Mayawati’s BSP and Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls also, RLSP had drawn a blank as a Mahagathbandhan ally.

Both the leaders, therefore, needed each other: Kushwaha for staying relevant in state politics and Nitish for reworking the same social engineering formula that had kept him in good stead in electoral politics for one and a half decades.

Nitish, a Kurmi by caste, apparently wants to revive the non-Yadav OBC front by building bridges with Kushwaha, a Koeri leader. Together, the two castes account for about 10 per cent of the state electorate and are known as the “Luv-Kush” in Bihar politics. Their unity had played a big role in helping Nitish oust Lalu Prasad’s RJD from power in 2005.

Nitish had further consolidated his position by winning over the extremely backward castes but Kushwaha’s exit dented the Luv-Kush unity and harmed Nitish’s prospects, especially in the last assembly polls. Even though RLSP got only 1.72 per cent of the total votes, it cost JD-U candidates dear in about a dozen constituencies.

Kushwaha insists that he had not set any preconditions for merging his party with JD-U, but he held about half-a-dozen meetings with Nitish in recent times. Political circles were earlier agog with rumours that Kushwaha might be sent to Rajya Sabha or his wife would be made a minister in the Nitish Cabinet, but he sought to deny it all. “Let me make it very clear that I have not placed any precondition for returning to JD-U. I have only come back home,” he says.

The 61-year-old has had a blow-hot-blow-cold relationship with Nitish over the years. A founding member of the Samata Party, founded by George Fernandes and Nitish in 1994, Kushwaha was made the leader of Opposition in 2004, less than a year after the merger of the party with JD-U in 2004. Once a blue-eyed boy of Nitish, he fell out with him and was expelled from JD-U for “anti-party activities” in 2007. Their relations became so bitter that Kushwaha was forcibly evicted from his official bungalow in Patna, in 2008. But he was back in Nitish’s good books within months and made the Rajya Sabha MP. He, however, quit JD-U again and floated his own outfit (RLSP) in 2013. He contested the 2014 general elections as an NDA ally and was made the minister of state in the Modi government. Three years later, he resigned and joined the Mahagathbandhan, much to the chagrin of the BJP. Now, he has come a full circle with his return to NDA via JD-U.