After political pundits wrote his political obituary, Nitish Kumar and his JD(U) emerged as a significant force in Bihar. The party is leading in 12 of 16 seats it contested in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. This gives Nitish Kumar enough bargaining power.
With 12 seats, the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) will be a crucial in NDA's stability at the Centre. (Image: X/NitishKumar)
Experts had written Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's political obituary. His Janata Dal (United), they said, was on its deathbed. They blamed Nitish Kumar's flip-flop-flip for the tight spot in which the JD(U) found itself in.
They should have waited for June 4, the day of the 2024 Lok Sabha election result.
If there is one star that has emerged from a rattled NDA ship, is the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U). Unlike the performance of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which was expected to do well, the JD(U)'s result came as a surprise to many political pundits.
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"I am giving in writing that the JD(U) won't win even five seats in Bihar. There is no organisation of the JDU left in Bihar. No one wants to vote for it. The JD(U) has reached this condition because of Nitish Kumar. No one can guarantee that Nitish won't flip again," poll strategist Prashant Kishore was reported making this prediction on the future of the JD(U) in August 2023.
Nine months since then, although Bihar CM changed sides to join hands with the BJP, leaving the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan aside, the trends of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections have already revealed that the JD(U) is far from gone, as the poll strategist suggested.
Contesting in just 16 seats in Bihar, the Election Commission of India data suggest, the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) is leading on 12 seats in Bihar.
While its NDA ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is leading in 12 of the 17 seats it contested in Bihar.
Bihar sends 40 MPs to the Lok Sabha.
It isn't just about JD(U) seats, Nitish Kumar is the undisputed leader of the Extremely Backward Classes (EBC), which helped even the BJP with consolidation of votes.
The EBC is nothing but a social engineering by Nitish. It is OBC minus the Yadavs, a traditional voter base of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
The trends of the Election Commission have shown that the JD(U) might be emerging as one of the biggest parties in the state, along with the BJP.
Not just Prashant Kishore, even former Bihar deputy CM, Sushil Kumar Modi, had discredited the JD(U) and its supremo, Nitish Kumar, earlier this year, saying, "People know that now there is no future for Nitish Kumar and his party."
The JD(U), once said to have no future in the eastern state, is ahead in the Lok Sabha seats of Banka, Bhagalpur, Madhepura, Supaul, Munger, Jhanjharpur, Valmiki Nagar, Gopalganj and Siwan, to name a few.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the JD(U), contesting in 16 seats in Bihar, won all the seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The number of seats the JD(U) might end up winning is already suggesting that the JD(U) could be a crucial coalition partner of the BJP in the NDA fold.
After the Andhra Pradesh-based Telugu Desam Party (TDP), it is the JD(U) that has the most number of seats. This places Nitish Kumar on a bargaining seat.
In the last two decades, Nitish Kumar has been the only constant in Bihar. Despite the fact that his party, the JD(U), is the number three party in the Bihar Assembly, Nitish Kumar and the JD(U) have prevailed. That explains the bargaining power of the Bihar Chief Minister.
This mandate comes at a time when Nitish Kumar was dealing with opposition attacks on his party's diminishing numbers in the Vidhan Sabha.
Although the NDA is going strong in Bihar, the BJP is trailing in five of the 17 seats it contested. While Chirang Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) is leading in five seats, Jitanram Manji's Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) has won the lone seat it fought.
The JD(U), discredited months back, will now seemingly look to strengthen the NDA's Lok Sabha strength, which had won 353 seats in 2019.
The BJP, too, is looking to plummet from 303 seats in 2019 to around 240 in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
Published By:
Sushim Mukul
Published On:
Jun 4, 2024
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