Bihar tangle

Bihar’s most popular political strongman and the one reason for which the Janata Dal (United) exists, Nitish Kumar, is in a tough spot when his own nominee and present Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi refused to step down.

Nitish resigned nine months back after the JD(U) experienced a drubbing during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls when the party could win only two seats from the 20 it won in 2009. He resigned as Chief Minister and propped up Manjhi to lead the party government. However, Manjhi, according to JD(U) leaders, has been toeing the Modi-Amit Shah line and refused to mend his ways.

That led to strong suspicion that Jitan Ram Manjhi would join hands with the BJP when the state goes to the polls sometime in October 2015. The Bihar Assembly has a strength of 243 with five vacancies. The ruling camp is 145-MLA strong with JDU (115), RJD (24), Congress (5) and Communist Party of India (1).
The opposition camp has Bharatiya Janata Party (88) and 5 Independents.

Jiten Ram Manjhi is said to have the support of 12 of the JD(U)’s 111 legislators. If the BJP’s 87 and three independents support him, he will have 102. Governor K N Tripathi had refused to take a call on resolving the political crisis and the delay has only aroused deep suspicion in the Nitish Camp that it was to facilitate ‘horse trading’. To complicate matters, the Patna High Court, in response to a PIL, had also added to the crisis when it maintained that the letter appointing Nitish as the JD(U) legislature party leader needed to be viewed so that it would have no legal consequences for a decision by the Governor.

Suspecting that the Governor was acting as per the direction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah, Nitish paraded all 130 MLAs supporting him, in front of President Pranab Kumar Mukherjee. In a way, the political situation in Bihar had some similarities with Nagaland. In Bihar, the Governor summoned the house for the floor test on February 20, after ten days. In Nagaland it took a month for the floor test to be called.

Nagaland Post in its editorial points out that for the BJP, the State of Bihar assumes more importance than the fact that the party would also like to add the state in its kitty. The rancour between Nitish and Modi had led to the JD(U) splitting with the NDA in mid-2013 after being in alliance since 2005.

In 2014 Modi took his revenge by wresting 22 seats up from 12 that the BJP won in 2009.In the forthcoming assembly elections, the BJP will look towards improvement on its tally to either form the government on its own or in alliance with perhaps Manjhi, if the latter splits and forms another party. In the current Bihar imbroglio, Nitish Kumar has been dealt a psychological blow when his own handpicked man refused to vacate the chair.

If Manjhi is a problem, then Nitish could be blamed for inviting the problem. How the alliance of JDU, RJD, Congress, CPI is going to fight the elections will be interesting if the AAP, which is on the upswing, decides to try its hand in Bihar, says Nagalandpost.