The importance of being Nitish Kumar in Indian politics: All eyes on him again

The Lok Sabha election results in Bihar have once again underlined the importance of chief minister Nitish Kumar in the state’s predominantly triangular politics and underlined his uncanny knack of bouncing back just when people start writing him off.

Despite his flip-flop in the last five years from the Grand Alliance (GA) to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Kumar has remained pivotal to Bihar politics and has been able to play his politics deftly to be always one up.

The way the election results have emerged, with the BJP looking set to fall way short of the 272-mark on its own, the INDIA bloc has got as much interested in him as is the BJP interested in holding on to him. Both BJP and Congress, as well as NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader Sharad Pawar, have been in touch with him.

“It is the work of Nitish Kumar and the performance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that has got thumps up from the people in Bihar. The Janata Dal-United (JD-U) is set to win all the seats it has contested,” said JD-U state president Umesh Kushwaha.

Political analysts view Nitish’s unflustered demeanour as a result of his continued indispensability in Bihar politics even after remaining CM for almost 18 years since 2005 with or without numerical strength in the Vidhan Sabha and lack of credible alternative and self-belief in any of the two big parties - the BJP and the RJD - to go without him in elections.

“The attacks on him over the last couple of years indicated that he remained important, as both the BJP and the RJD knew that without him they might find it difficult to sail through state’s triangular politics, which warrants any two sides to come together to prevail over the third and exactly that happened. JD-U, which contested one seat less than the BJP, has displayed a better strike rate so far,” said social analyst DM Diwakar.

Nitish may at times appear to have lost political clout, but he always has the face value that none of the two bigger parties has been able to showcase as an alternative, which the people could get convinced with, and that gives him the uncanny knack of springing back to life.

“Nitish Kumar’s unique selling point (USP) has no parallel in Bihar’s recent history and that keeps him relevant, as over the years his brand of politics has managed to successfully marginalise his potentially stronger adversaries by not allowing them to use their agenda. Besides, there is no dent on his personal career, and he has made possible in Bihar what was unheard of earlier,” said Diwakar.

The way the INDIA bloc has started looking towards Nitish Kumar at the very hint of the BJP falling short of the majority mark highlights how well Nitish Kumar plays his political cards.

“He is crucial for both the BJP as well as the Opposition and now he can manoeuvre things to his advantage. But how he will behave, only time will tell, for his decisions are only his,” said Diwakar.

Another social analyst NK Choudhary said that the results in Bihar have given ample food for thought to the RJD and the Congress, as to how costly it was to lose Nitish in the run up to election. “RJD has been almost blanked and even Congress and the CPI-ML may do better than it,” he added.

Choudhary said that Nitish Kumar’s image and RJD’s numerical strength could have made things look entirely different, and that could emerge as another option to repeat the 2015 show, when they had stopped the BJP at the peak of Narendra Modi’s popularity.

Both RJD and the BJP have seen the impact of going into polls without Nitish, as despite growth in their respective tallies they have fallen way short of the magic figure. One side losing Nitish Kumar has benefited the other. And that could make Nitish crucial also in view of the 2025 Assembly polls in Bihar.

In his first stint as the CM, Nitish had lasted just seven days, as he did not manage the seven votes required to pass the trust vote on the floor of the assembly. It was the second failed attempt after 2000, when RJD’s Lalu Prasad Yadav thwarted his CM ambitions, though Nitish’s then party, Samata Party, enjoyed the Valpayee government’s support. Prasad ensured his wife Rabri Devi would occupy 1 Anne Marg, the Bihar CM’s official residence.

Kumar’s first five-year term as CM began on November 24, 2005, when he was sworn in as the 33rd CM of Bihar, at the historic Gandhi Maidan in Patna, which ended the 15-year rule of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). A galaxy of leaders, including former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the then BJP president LK Advani, JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief Parkash Singh Badal and National Conference (NC) head Farooq Abdullah, had attended the gala function. Since then, Nitish has not looked back despite changes in alliance partners.

Unexpected differences cropped up between Kumar’s JD(U) and BJP when the latter declared Narendra Modi, then the Gujarat CM, as its prime ministerial candidate ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Eventually, JD(U) severed ties with the BJP, which proved costly for Kumar’s party in the 2014 parliamentary elections, in which it won just two of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar.

Owning moral responsibility, Kumar resigned as CM and handpicked Jitan Ram Manjhi as his successor. However, ahead of the 2015 assembly polls, Kumar was back in the CM’s saddle, dislodging Manjhi after the two developed serious differences. Kumar won the trust vote after the BJP staged a walkout and the RJD, Congress and Communist Party of India (CPI) backed him.

In 2015, Kumar stunned all when his party decided to join the Grand Alliance (GA), or the Mahagathbandhan, comprising the arch-rival RJD and the Congress. The alliance won the 2015 assembly polls handsomely, but Kumar’s honeymoon with RJD proved to be short-lived.

In less than two years, he parted ways with his new-found ally and went back to the NDA fold over differences with his then deputy Tejaswhi Prasad Yadav on corruption charges against the latter. He vowed never to join hands with the RJD again in future.

The BJP lapped up Kumar and he was sworn in as the CM for the sixth time in July 2017. But after the trust issue with the BJP in 2020 Assembly polls, when Nitish’s JD-U was relegated to the third position for the first time, he again switched sides to the RJD in 2022, vowing never to join hands with the BJP again.

However, just a year later, he was again back to the NDA fold in the run up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections to change the calculations, vowing never to leave it again. But in politics, it is never the last time. It is the circumstances that dictate decisions. And Nitish Kumar knows it better than anyone.