PATNA: Nitish Kumar may well go down in history as an astute politician who managed to occupy the post of Bihar chief minister for longer than all his predecessors, despite his JD(U) never winning a majority in the state assembly.
Ironically, though, a section of his die-hard supporters sees the canny leader as a victim of palace intrigue, even as his opponents insist that he has been done in by rank opportunism.
The remarks of Madan Sahni, the minister for social welfare and an old JD(U) hand, summed up the sentiment within the party.
"We are stunned to see whatever is happening. It is hard to believe that this could have been Nitish Kumar's own decision," said Sahni, expressing disbelief over the JD(U) supremo's "long-standing wish" of representing "both Houses of Parliament and state legislature", which he seeks to fulfil by getting elected to the Rajya Sabha in the ongoing biennial elections.
JD(U) workers, who have been forbidden by police from approaching the chief minister's official residence, vented their ire by indulging in vandalism at the party office, refusing to believe that their leader, who had once been seen as a "Prime Minister material" by even admirers in BJP like late Sushil Kumar Modi, would agree to "such a disgraceful exit".
RJD working president Tejashwi Yadav, his former deputy who is currently the leader of the opposition, said, "BJP has done a Maharashtra in Bihar. But Nitish Kumar has only himself to blame. While in alliance, we supported him as Chief Minister despite having more MLAs, but he chose to walk away on two occasions."
The JD(U) supremo, who turned 75 last week, however, has much to look back on with satisfaction. Having started off as a politically inclined engineering student in the 1970s, he cut his teeth in the "JP movement" launched by legendary socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan. Electoral success eluded him till 1985, when he won the Harnaut assembly seat in his home district of Nalanda.
Four years later, he was in Parliament, as the MP from Barh, and the "rise of the OBCs" that Mandal signified, earned him a berth in the ministry headed by VP Singh.
Kumar broke away from Janata Dal in 1995, uneasy with the growing clout of his old associate Lalu Prasad, Yadav's father and the then CM of Bihar, who was attaining a cult-like status for boldly championing Mandal and arresting BJP patriarch Lal Krishna Advani, halting the "Ram Rath Yatra" in its tracks.
His own commitment to social justice and communal harmony made Kumar, who floated Samata Party with the help of George Fernandes, try his luck with the CPI(ML) Liberation, then a fledgling ultra-Left outfit, though hard-nosed political sense made him realise that it was not an electorally feasible and, in 1996 when Lok Sabha polls were held, he fought as a BJP ally.
Consistency as a BJP ally earned him a cabinet berth under PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who also backed him, despite the saffron party then being numerically superior, in making a bid for the Bihar CM's post in 2000, when the state assembly polls threw a hung house.
Known to be a skilled negotiator, Kumar convinced Sharad Yadav, another Janata Dal bigwig, who had fallen apart with Lalu Prasad, that it was time to join hands, thus bringing into existence the new entity called Janata Dal (United).
The BJP, mindful of its limitations in Bihar on account of the perception that it was "an upper caste party", agreed to cede some ground. The JD(U) fought more seats than the BJP did in both assembly polls held in 2005, the second one, held in the month of November, resulting in a comprehensive victory for the NDA.
Kumar has since never looked back. With even his critics admitting that his governance track record was far better than his predecessors, it led the NDA to its best-ever performance in the 2020 assembly polls, when the JD(U)-BJP combine bagged 206 out of the 243 seats.
Amid the changes that were taking place in national politics, Kumar was seen by some as a potential counterfoil to Narendra Modi, his then Gujarat counterpart, and the rivalry led him to snap ties with the BJP when the latter was made the head of the saffron party’s campaign committee, a veritable precursor to projection as Prime Ministerial candidate.
Humiliation of the JD(U) in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls led Kumar to step down as chief minister, owning "moral responsibility", though he continued to function as "super CM" while Jitan Ram Manjhi held fort, and eventually elbowed the latter out, armed with the support of Lalu Prasad, who had agreed to bury the hatchet.
The alliance between the two arch-rivals led to a spectacular success in the 2015 assembly polls, which saw the BJP putting up its worst-ever performance in many years, despite riding the tailwinds of the "Modi wave".
However, the “Mahagathbandhan” was short-lived as Kumar decided, two years later, that he was better off realigning with the BJP.
Since then, the pejorative Hindi slang "paltu ram" (turncoat) has remained stuck to Kumar, efforts at restoring law and order and bringing in all-around development with a thrust on empowerment of women notwithstanding.
With his son Nishant, who is in his late 40s, all set to enter politics, Kumar may now also lose the pedestal on which he placed himself while denouncing "parivaarvaad" (dynasty politics).