Manas Dasgupta
PATNA, Aug 9: Amidst straining of the relations between the alliance partners, the Janata Dal (United) and the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar tendered the resignation of his ministry dumping the BJP and is set to join hands with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress to form a new ministry.
Worried over the fate of the Shiv Sena –led three-party Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra where the BJP managed to engineer a rebellion within the Sena to return to power, Kumar after consulting his party legislators decided to prematurely cut off relations with the BJP following allegations that the saffron party was offering huge sums to cause defections within the JD(U) ranks “to cut Nitish Kumar to his size.”
Though a larger party than the JD(U) which is left with only 45 members in the present 242-member Bihar Legislative Assembly, the 77-member BJP still allowed Kumar to adorn the post of the chief minister for the sake of its old-time alliance when the BJP was much smaller party in Bihar and Kumar was the most respected leader in the state. But lately, trouble had started brewing for Kumar as the BJP gave enough signals to indicate that by next elections the party was all set go alone and would dump the JD(U) to come to power on its own.
After the Maharashtra developments, the BJP national president JP Nadda’s recent comments that all regional parties would be wiped out one by one to be replaced by the BJP everywhere, came as the final warning to Kumar that the days of his JD(U) was numbered if he continued his alliance with the BJP. Kumar was convinced that the BJP central leadership would play the same game with his party as it did in Maharashtra to overthrow the Uddhav Thackeray led government and break the JD(U) in pieces.
Kumar convened a meeting of his party members on Tuesday to finalise his future course of actions and overwhelmingly received the advice to end the party’s alliance with the BJP and join hands with the RJD and the Congress to form the next government.
Amidst reports that the BJP ministers in his cabinet were likely to quit his ministry before he resigned, Kumar submitted the resignation of his ministry to the governor Phagu Chauhan at 3.40 P.M. on Tuesday and left for the residence of the former Bihar chief minister and the RJD chief Tejashwi Yadav’s mother Rabdi Devi on a courtesy call.
“I have resigned in deference to the wishes of all of our party MLAs who favoured the party to come out of the NDA umbrella,” Kumar told the waiting media persons outside the Raj-Bhavan after submitting his resignation.
Kumar is expected to form a new ministry in alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress combine and is likely to stake his claim by Tuesday evening. The left parties are also set to extend their support and join the new ministry to be headed by Nitish Kumar.
Kumar is certain to meet the Governor a second time with Opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav to seek a new term as Chief Minister. The BJP’s senior leaders from Bihar are flying to Patna from Delhi to discuss the fallout. They include Sushil Kumar Modi and former Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. “Nitish Kumar has betrayed the people of Bihar and the BJP. People will teach him a lesson,” Bihar BJP chief Sanjay Jaiswal said at a news conference.
The tension between the two parties hit breakpoint over Nitish Kumar’s concerns that Union Minister Amit Shah is working relentlessly to split the Janata Dal (United). To this end, Nitish Kumar blames RCP Singh, a former leader from his own party, for serving as Amit Shah’s proxy. RCP Singh quit the JDU on the weekend after his party accused him of deep corruption.
In 2021, RCP Singh joined the union cabinet as the representative of Nitish Kumar’s party. The Bihar Chief Minister was upset about being offered only one cabinet position. Yesterday, his closest aide said that RCP Singh had decided to join the centre of his own accord and had informed Nitish Kumar that Amit Shah had said he alone was acceptable as the JDU rep in the cabinet. “Will Amit Shah decide our party’s matters?” said Rajeev Ranjan Singh allias Lalan Singh, who is the president of the JDU.
The RJD which is Bihar’s single-largest party with 79 members against the BJP’s strength of 77, also met on Tuesday to discuss the Bihar crisis. The party is headed by Tejashwi Yadav. The party is expected to formally announce its support for Nitish Kumar, reviving an earlier alliance with him (the partnership lasted for less than three years). Tejashwi Yadav will, according to sources, serve as Deputy Chief Minister in a new government.
Till 2017, Tejashwi Yadav was a minister along with his brother in Nitish Kumar’s government which had three components: the JDU, Lalu Yadav’s party, and the Congress. Nitish Kumar had formed an alliance with them after calling off a decades-long relationship with the BJP. But he accused Tejashwi Yadav and his brother of corruption and used that controversy to end his alliance with ‘secular’ parties and returned to the BJP. Nitish Kumar is reportedly convinced that Amit Shah wants to repeat the Maharashtra model in Bihar -Uddhav Thackeray was forced to quit as Chief Minister after Eknath Shinde, a senior leader from his party, the Shiv Sena, instigated a huge revolt in partnership with the BJP. Eknath Shinde was rewarded by the BJP with the post of Maharashtra Chief Minister. Kumar has cited several “conspiratorial steps” by the BJP allegedly to dethrone his ministry from power as the reason for taking the extreme step.
Later the JD(U) – RJD legislature parties jointly met at CM’s official residence to elect Kumar as the leader. The Congress and several members of the left parties were also present. All the parties have kept their letters of support to Kumar ready to be handed over to the governor demanding an invitation to Kumar to form the next ministry.
Bihar Congress president Madan Mohan Jha said his party MLAs would “support the anti-BJP government in the State.” The Congress has 19 MLAs in the State Legislative Assembly. According to sources, Kumar is said to have spoken to Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday but there was no official word on this from the Congress. CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya had said his party, with 12 MLAs in the Bihar Assembly, was ready to support the JD(U) if it left the BJP.
The BJP, meanwhile, has gone into a huddle at the residence of Deputy CM Tarkishore Prasad, where all ministers belonging to the party besides state president Sanjay Jaiswal and other senior leaders are also present.
In the State Assembly, which has an effective strength of 242, requiring 121 MLAs for a majority, the RJD has the highest number of 79 MLAs followed by the BJP (77) and the JD(U) with 44. The JD(U) also enjoys the support of four MLAs of former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha and an Independent. The Congress has 19 MLAs while the CPIML(L) has 12 and CPI and CPI(M) have two each. Besides, one MLA belongs to Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM.
The JD(U) – RJD- Congress combine will have the strength of 143 members in the 243-member Bihar Assembly but Kumar is expected to submit a list of 161 MLAs supporting him. In the new format, RJD”s Tejashwi Yadav may be offered the deputy chief ministership and the post of the speaker may also go to the RJD. The Congress is also learnt to have staked claims for some important ministries including a deputy chief minister’s post.
The party sources said the preparations for the formation of a new alliance after dumping the BJP was going on for the last couple of months and gained further momentum after the BJP upstaged the Maharashtra UPA government, and the format of the new ministry was by and large ready, However, all the supporting parties are likely to try to extract the maximum possible advantage in the new arrangement before the new government settled down.
