New Delhi: The split between the BJP and JD-U became official exactly one week after Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was anointed as the poll panel chief for 2014 by his party. The news of split became crystal clear when Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said recently that the situation had become difficult. Now it is all over in between BJP and JD-U.
The man responsible for the growing discomfort between the JD-U and the BJP has been none other than Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The seventeen-year-old alliance between the two partners ended on 16 June, 2013. However, the parting was not amicable but rather acrimonious with Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav lashing out at its old associate.
Nitish categorically said that he was ‘forced’ to take the decision and that the party could not compromise with their basic principles and that he was not worried about the consequences. This may sound confident and belligerent coming from a man who now has to prove his majority before the House. But that has probably been taken care of by Nitish. He has 119 MLAs (one is a dissident) in a house of 243. Half way mark is 122. So the JD-U is short of four as of now. If the JD-U is able to rope in the independents, then its job is done. And if it falls short of majority, then it may cut a deal with the Congress and ask it to abstain during voting. So in all likelihood the Nitish government in Bihar may sail through, otherwise the JD-U would not have taken the step that it did. Nitish has almost two and a half years to complete before the state goes to the polls and fresh elections is something he wouldn’t want. However, it’s one thing to run a government with a massive mandate (NDA won more than 200 seats in Bihar in 2010) and it’s another to run a government with wafer thin majority.
The flip side of the coin is also that the BJP knew that any sort of elevation of Narendra Modi was bound to have repercussions and the JD-U may walk out of the alliance. The Bihar CM has been saying for months now that the Gujarat Chief Minister was not acceptable to his party as NDA’s prime ministerial candidate. Also, Modi was not allowed in campaign in Bihar and Nitish had returned the money given by the Gujarat CM for Kosi floods. Things had become so bad in recent times that Nitish and Modi looked through each other when they were in capital recently for chief ministers meeting. It was a point of no return.
The fact is that even though Modi is seen as an icon of development, he is also seen as the poster boy of Hindutva and as a polarizing factor. But there is another fact – the rank and file of the BJP were growing restless and clamouring for Modi to be elevated as the face of the party. Also, Modi’s popularity has been growing amongst the middle class and the youth and the BJP realised they had to gamble with the Gujarat CM to get them votes in 2014. And a third fact is that Nitish had his own political compulsions – the 15 to 17 percent Muslim votes of Bihar.
Bureau Report
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