New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday expressed confidence that the INDIA alliance was intact in Bihar and said that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s recent move to take charge of the Janata Dal-United was to secure the regional party and not a signal to former ally BJP.
In a sudden move, the JD-U national executive committee met in New Delhi on December 29 and elected Nitish Kumar as party chief in place of senior leader Lalan Singh. There were reports that Lalan Singh could lead a group of MLAs and join the RJD. However, the change of leadership in the JD-U was interpreted in the political circles as Nitish Kumar being miffed with the Congress over INDIA alliance seat-sharing for the 2024 national elections and making overtures to his former ally BJP for a reunion.
“The INDIA bloc is intact. I don’t think Nitish Kumar is moving towards the BJP. It appears that he has taken charge of the JD-U to secure his party. The regional party is facing threats of a split,” AICC secretary in charge of Bihar Ajay Kapoor told ETV Bharat. The AICC functionary’s views were shared by two former Congress veterans from Bihar.
“I think Nitish Kumar is playing up the OBC issue. Hence, he wanted an OBC party chief instead of an upper caste Lalan Singh to give a message. The move seems more like driven by internal JD-U politics than the opposition alliance. Nitish Kumar can’t go back to the NDA fold as the BJP had humiliated him. In 2019, the BJP even tried to dent his party,” former Congress Working Committee member Tariq Anwar told ETV Bharat.
“I don’t think Nitish Kumar is going to the BJP. The change of guard is an internal matter of the JD-U and Nitish Kumar has headed the party earlier also. Besides, if they were going back to BJP, Lalan Singh would not have been attacking the saffron party publicly,” former union minister Shakeel Ahmed said.
The JD-U change of guard had created a flutter as Nitish Kumar had played a key role in the formation of the 28 member INDIA alliance to take on the BJP in 2024 and his exit just months ahead of the coming Lok Sabha polls would have caused a severe damage to the opposition unity. Both Anwar and Ahmed said that the opposition alliance was intact and that seat-sharing talks in Bihar would start soon.
Before that, the Bihar leaders have briefed the five-member national alliance committee of the grand old party on the seat-sharing prospects in the eastern state. According to party insiders, the Congress is likely to get around 7-8 parliamentary seats out of the total 40 in Bihar although a demand of 10 seats has been made by the state leaders. The JD-U-RJD-Congress-Left parties are part of the ruling coalition in Bihar. In 2019 Nitish Kumar was with the BJP but dropped the saffron party in 2022 when he joined hands with the RJD and Congress to retain the chief minister’s chair.
Nitish Kumar also published the state caste census which has given a leg up to Rahul Gandhi’s demand for a fresh nationwide OBC count to counter the BJP’s Hindutva politics.
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