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Nitish Kumar had no option but to quit NDA

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Even though the Congress voted for Nitish Kumar during the trust motion on Wednesday, instead of abstaining, it is early days yet to predict a Congress-JD(U) alliance in the wake of the Nitish-BJP split.

What can be said with greater certainty is that it has given respite to a beleaguered UPA and improved the chances of general elections being held on schedule next year, instead of being advanced to the year-end.

In recent weeks, speculation had been rife that Mulayam Singh Yadav was getting ready to pull the plug during the monsoon session of Parliament. But Kumar’s exit from the NDA has made the Congress breath easy.

With a special package for Bihar in the pipeline, the Bihar CM may not be in a hurry to destabilise the central government. He would also want to do a detailed ground-level assessment of his prospects in Bihar following his break with the BJP. And to get his act together, for which he would need time.

What is more, Mulayam Singh would do a rethink if he knows that Kumar could bail out the government. The SP chief would not want to withdraw support and not have the government fall. He would obviously not want to get on the wrong side of the central government, whose opposition he could do without on a host of issues like CBI cases against him and his family, and money needed for his state, if the government manages to survive.

Though the Congress is making all the right noises about Nitish Kumar, it may not be in a hurry to decide who it is going to ally with in Bihar. It suits the Grand Old Party to keep the suspense going on whether it will go with tried and tested ally Lalu Yadav or a new friend, Nitish Kumar, it has been cultivating. The prime minister certainly did not hide his views that Nitish could be an option for the Congress, when he described him as a “secular” leader and indicated that in politics there are no permanent enemies or friends.

The AICC reshuffle that carried Rahul Gandhi’s imprint also indicated that Bihar is important in the young Gandhi’s scheme of things, even though the party’s base has really been decimated there, even more than in neighbouring UP. CP Joshi’s exit from the Union cabinet and entrusting him with the charge of Bihar showed that Rahul Gandhi wanted someone he can trust — and Joshi enjoys Rahul’s confidence — when back-channel talks are held with Nitish (Rahul is believed to favour him) and Lalu in Bihar with a view to forging an alliance there.

Let us face it. For both the Congress and the BJP, UP and Bihar will be critical in 2014. Virtually out of the picture in the south and weak in the east, and having peaked in some of the Hindi heartland states like Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh in 2009, a Narendra Modi-led BJP cannot hope to add to the party kitty without making substantial gains in the two big states in the Ganga belt. So also is the case with the Congress.

The Congress may not bring the support of a community to the table in Bihar, but in the present situation, it could endow any alliance with a psychological advantage. With Modi now virtually a fait accompli as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate — Kumar’s exit has also weakened the anti-Modi camp inside the BJP — the minorities would want to strengthen the Congress, or the regional parties which align with it, in states where the Congress itself is weak, for the simple reason that it is the Congress that could contain a Modi-led-BJP at the national level.

Kumar — as well as Mamata Banerjee and Naveen Patnaik — may flag off a federal front in the hope of winning over the minorities, but many regional parties will keep their options open till after the elections. And even if such a viable front has to emerge, it will only be after the polls. Even if a three-party federal front is formed now, there is no surety they will stick together after the polls, when arithmetic will determine alliances.

The recent by-election in Maharajgunj, where the JD(U) lost to the RJD with an increased majority, was ironically one more precipitating factor for Kumar’s decision to quit the NDA. Given the position he has been taking against Modi, he had gone too far to turn back. He also realised that the upper castes, unhappy with him, may not vote for him even if the NDA alliance remained intact, as happened in Maharajgunj.

What gave him heart, even as his candidate lost badly to the RJD’s Prabhunath Singh, was that 40% of Muslims voted for the JD(U) candidate in the Muslim-dominated villages of the constituency and this is the feedback the party has got.

Of course, Kumar has to contend with a JD(U) base, which is essentially anti-Congress in character, and his natural inclinations — and his politics — throughout his life have been against the Congress.

Now, he has to put together an alternative social base to the one he fashioned in 2010 with the BJP, which was a winner. He is called to retain his hold in Bihar, and this is no small challenge, given the way Lalu Yadav is picking up momentum, and to acquire an image nationally as the first leader to take on Modi frontally, at the cost of an uncertain political future for himself and his party.

This could give him an advantage in the race for leadership of a post-poll third front, if it gets formed.

But he has taken a huge gamble, probably the biggest of his political career.

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