Bihar Assembly Elections – 2020
By DK Sinha
Patna: Even as the Bharatiya Janata Party achieved its goal of cutting “chief minister and JD (U) president Nitish Kumar down to size” this Bihar assembly election, ‘Sushashan Babu‘ now has no option left other than sticking to the script written by saffron soldiers.
Even though Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh sprang a surprise earlier in the day through his morning tweet by asking the JDU president to leave the BJP and bless Tejashwi, Nitish could not return to grand alliance as he has already burnt his finger by doing so. Digvijay said, “Nitish ji, Lalu ji has fought with you and has gone to jail in the agitations. Leave BJP / RSS. Save the country from ruin.” He further added: “Nitish ji, Bihar has become small for you, you should join the politics of India. Do not let the Centre’s policy of ‘divide and rule’ flourish and help all socialists who believe in a secular .
On the other hand, the BJP has hit back at the Congress leader.
Why should Nitish, who has already declared this to be his last elections, and is already endorsed by the BJP for the Chief Minister’s post, should leave the NDA now? In any case, why should even the RJD show any enthusiasm in taking him back on board following Nitish’s Janata Dal (United)’s relatively poor show at the hustings? JDU had contested on 101 seats in 2015 as partner of RJD and Congress and won 71 of them at a strike rate of 69.3 per cent. In the 2020 poll, the party contested 115 seats and won just 43, their strike rate down to 37.4 per cent, a negative swing of almost 32 per cent. The BJP with the upswing of over 33 percent salvaged the situation for NDA. The JD(U)s vote share came down marginally from 16.83 per cent to 15.39 per cent, a decrease of 1.44 percentage point.
Even if Digvijay really meant what he tweeted, it makes no meaning for Nitish. The election results prove that the JD (U) president’s stature is not the same as what it was in 2013 when he had left NDA after Narendra Modi was declared the Prime Ministerial candidate. Nitish knows so well that he would never be projected as Prime Ministerial nominee of the UPA with his rating plummeting so sharply, particularly during the last five years. His detractors now say that following his party’s poor show in the elections, so many chinks have been exposed in his so called good governance, that very few people would like to certify him as an excellent or even a good development administrator, a role so close to heart.
Does this mean that the best bet for Nitish would be to work in tandem with BJP and remain chief minister of the state for the next five years? He will have to try to strike a balance with an assertive or even aggressive BJP and also undo the mistakes in the execution of his much-touted development and welfare schemes. Ultimately, he would like to be remembered as the best chief minister of Bihar before he retires from electoral politics.
– globalbihari bureau
