Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 19: The Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was unanimously re-elected the leader of the NDA legislature party at a joint meeting of the elected legislators of all the alliance partners in Patna on Wednesday to pave the way for the formation of a new government under his leadership in the state.
Mr Kumar is scheduled to take oath as the chief minister for a record 10th time at 11.30 a.m. at Patna’s historic Gandhi Maidan on Thursday. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the union home minister Amit Shah, several other Union Ministers and CMs of NDA-ruled states, among others, are expected to attend the swearing-in ceremony.
Mr Nitish Kumar was elected leader of the NDA in the presence of all heads of the NDA bloc. LJP (RV) Chief Chirag Paswan, RLM Chief Upendra Kushwaha and HAM (S) president Santosh Kumar Suman and BJP State Unit President Dilip Kumar Jaiswal were present. BJP’s Samrat Choudhary proposed Mr Kumar’s name and then others supported his proposal.
Earlier in the day, Mr Kumar was elected as leader of the JD(U) legislature party, before tendering his resignation to Governor Arif Mohammad Khan as head of the outgoing government. After his election as the leader of the NDA, he called on the governor again and staked his claim to form the new government.
Meanwhile, intense lobbying is underway among the NDA partners to finalise allocation of cabinet berths, and a build a consensus over the post of Assembly Speaker ahead of the swearing-in ceremony. Mr Shah, who is reaching Patna on Wednesday night, is also likely to meet Nitish Kumar and State BJP leaders to discuss the formation of the upcoming cabinet.
Meanwhile, the poll strategist-turned politician Prashant Kishor, the founder-leader of the Jan Suraaj Party, said the total rout of his party in the Bihar Assembly polls was a “huge shock” to him and added that he would not give up easily and would continue his efforts in Bihar’s political arena and repeated the saying, “You are not defeated till you quit.” Mr Kishor said while his party’s attempts did not yield electoral success, they managed to take the political discourse in Bihar away from just caste and religion to issues such as employment and migration.
Mr Kishor said the four key voter groups in Bihar comprise those voting in the name of caste, those voting in the name of religion, those voting for the NDA because they are scared of Lalu Yadav’s return, and those voting for the opposition because they are scared of the BJP. Jan Suraaj, he said, was able to dent the first and second groups, but could not influence the third and fourth groups.
In the run-up to the polls, Kishor had claimed the ruling JDU won’t win more than 25 seats, but the Nitish Kumar-led party bagged 85 seats. Asked about the claim, he pointed to the Rs 10,000 self-employment assistance extended to 1.2 crore women ahead of the polls. He said the state government spent over Rs 100 crore in each of the 243 constituencies.
“I firmly believe the JDU shouldn’t have won more than 25 seats. But now that they have ‘won’ 80 plus, people are telling me ‘your analysis was wrong’. It looks wrong on the surface… but, if you look closely, one of the factors is that the government gave Rs 100 crore to Rs 125 crore to the people (before voting) and, of this amount, 60,000 to 62,000 people were given Rs 10,000 each,” he said.
The Jan Suraaj Party leader said he was not giving up. “The BJP too had just two MPs once. When you make a party, such results can come. We did not spread the venom of caste and religion. We will try again,” he said, adding that he has committed 10 years to the welfare of Bihar.
Kishor said he had not expected that Jan Suraaj would get just around 4 per cent vote share. He said he never got a survey done before the polls, something he relied on during his work as an election strategist. “I played it blind. My estimate was that we would get 12-15 per cent of the vote share. But it came to 3.5 per cent, so we need to analyse,” he said.
Asked if his enthusiasm and his party’s political capital last five years, Kishor replied, “I had committed 10 years to this effort in Bihar. About three and a half years have passed. Of course, I had not planned to taste success in the 10th year. We were certain that we would be successful in three years. That did not happen. We will try again.”
