Patna: The relationship between BJP and JDU always remained a talking point in Bihar politics ever since both joined hands to form the government in the state in 2020. Though Nitish had become the Chief Minister, it was the BJP that played the role of 'big brother' since the BJP secured 74 seats while the former had to contend with 43 seats.
Due to the difference of 31 seats, Nitish has to relegate more cabinet berths to BJP. It was also for the first time that BJP got the speaker's chair apart from two deputy chief ministers in the history of Bihar politics.
Commenting on this uneasy alliance, a senior JDU leader(on condition of anonymity) told ETV Bharat, “Nitish Ji has sensed and realized that our numbers went down due to experiment of BJP who allowed LJP's Chirag Paswan to field candidates against us in polls. This has annoyed our leader more than anything else because only because of Chirag, we were relegated to the third position in Bihar.”
Hence, the Chirag episode was one of the focal points that triggered bitterness between JDU and BJP. The situation has reached a stage in which Nitish has decided to give some jitters to alliance partner BJP once again, he added.
In fact, on Sunday, JDU president Rajiv Ranjan alias Lalan Singh hinted that a plan is being hatched to sabotage Nitish and his party. He pointed fingers at the 'Chirag model' and described RCP Singh as another Chirag in the making without naming BJP but making it obvious that it was the saffron party's game plan. "Conspiracy to undermine Nitish is at work," he added.
If we observe the present scenario, it clearly shows that Nitish has realized BJP's game plan. "Nitish is now tackling a different BJP and recalls the compromises he has to make to retain his CM chair," adds a source.
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Unlike his first and second terms, where Nitish Kumar had good leaders like Arun Jaitely, Nand Kishore Yadav, and Sushil Modi to negotiate and handle alliance woes with efficacy. But no such luxury for him now, which lead to fissures among BJP and JDU leaders. Hence, in the third term, the relationship between JDU and BJP has always been on tenterhooks and it turned worse in 2022, forcing Nitish to look for other alternatives.
Summing up the bitter war, Patna-based political expert Dr. Sanjay Kumar attributes it to a trust deficit. “The main reason behind the split in the NDA is poaching. JDU had sensed that BJP was trying to poach their MLAs despite being an alliance partner. BJP wanted to humiliate Nitish and seize his powers by projecting another leader. BJP has done this in Arunachal Pradesh by poaching their six MLAs out of seven. That episode had created a trust deficit between BJP and JDU. Nitish watched that episode silently and did not utter a word because he was running the government with BJP in Bihar.”
Now, the alliance has once again reached the brink of collapse and Nitish has given enough indication towards the same as he skipped meetings with PM Narendra Modi, and Amit Shah recently. The bitterness was quite apparent on Sunday when Nitish didn't even exchange pleasantries with BJP leaders including deputy CM Tarkishore Prasad during a function.
