The Opposition camp knows.
New Delhi: The ruling National Democratic Alliance government in Bihar, led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is likely to come back to power again, with the assessment by Opposition parties indicating no signs of anti-incumbency against the present political dispensation. The state will go to the polls in less than eight months.
Sources in the Opposition camp, who are on the ground as part of the pre-election exercise, including those from the RJD and the Congress, told The Sunday Guardian that, barring any mishap by the ruling alliance that might force voters to change their preference at the last moment, there was no anti-NDA wave in the state.
Top placed sources in the Opposition, while responding to this newspaper’s queries, said that Kumar, who has been the CM of the state continuously since November 2005, is not expected to jump ship before the election, despite speculation in certain sections of the media based on his past record.
This, they believe, is attributed to Kumar’s understanding and feedback that he has received about no-I.N.D.I.A bloc sentiment in the state.
They confirmed that no efforts have been made so far by them to reach out to Kumar on this subject.
It is believed that the 74-year-old Nitish Kumar will announce a major political decision after 13 April, when the period of “kharmas”, considered inauspicious in Hindu calendar, ends.
On the last day of campaigning for the 2020 Bihar elections, Kumar had announced that it was his last election.
It is understood that Kumar is likely to pass the baton of the CM position to the BJP following the election results, marking the first election since the passing of former BJP leader and one of Kumar’s closest associates, Sushil Modi, who passed away in May last year because of cancer.
In the last five Assembly elections, the BJP has received roughly 17% votes on average—19.46, 24.4, 16.49, 15.65, and 10.97%. On the other hand, the corresponding numbers of JDU have been about 18%—15.39, 18.4, 22.58, 20.46 and 14.55%. The RJD has got 22% votes on average in the last five polls.
These numbers show that neither the BJP nor the RJD, on their own, have got enough votes to form the government, which has always placed Nitish Kumar-led JDU in the position of the kingmaker.
Sources indicated that the BJP national leadership has ensured that Kumar has no reason to complain, and all his demands—including increased Central support to improve the state’s infrastructure, which, despite all these years, remains among the poorest in the country—have been met.
It is pertinent to mention that a resurgent and determined Congress, which has been reduced to the role of a junior actor to the RJD in the state, is now taking steps to revive itself in all the districts of Bihar under the newly appointed in-charge of the party in Bihar, Krishna Allwaru and Kanhaiya Kumar, who is on a “padayatra” of the entire state.
The result of the steps being taken by them and the newly appointed president of the Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee, Rajesh Kumar, are unlikely to show immediate results, but are being planned and executed keeping the party’s long term revival in mind.
Sources indicated that the Congress, this time, will contest selected seats it considers worth fighting for, rather than contesting the seats chosen by the RJD, as was the trend in the past—especially during the tenure of former state president Akhilesh Singh. As a result of this trend, many seats that even the RJD could not win in the past few elections were given to the Congress to contest.