Why Nitish Kumar, despite facing flak over migrants’ issue, remains NDA’s best bet for Bihar polls

In the last week of April, when the Centre started mulling over the proposal to run Shramik special trains so that the migrants, stranded in different states, could be sent to their native places, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar put his foot down. The Bihar chief minister argued that the exercise would defeat the purpose of lockdown.

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The Bihar BJP president Dr Sanjay Jasiwal questioned Nitish and asked him to take a leaf out of Yogi’s book. “If the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister can bring students from Kota (in Rajasthan), and help migrants from other states reach Uttar Pradesh, why can’t Nitish take a similar decision,” argued Jaiswal.

The discordant note by the state BJP chief gave enough ammunition to allies like LJP to put Nitish in the dock. The LJP president Chirag Paswan, who is also the son of Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, said that he would back the BJP if it opts for a change of face in the Bihar Assembly polls. Chirag, who has been criticising Nitish for the past few months over ‘misgovernance’, added that “migrants issue in the state could have been handled in a better way.”

Against such backdrop, all eyes were on former BJP president and Union Home Minister Amit Shah who addressed a virtual rally on Sunday, thereby sounding the poll bugle for the ensuing Bihar Assembly elections. The senior BJP leader did not bat an eyelid before reposing his implicit faith in the leadership of Nitish.

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“I am confident the NDA, under the stewardship of Nitish Kumar, would romp home with a two-thirds majority in the November Assembly elections,” said Shah, before concluding his speech. The BJP’s master strategist thereby put a lid on the speculation related to the leadership of NDA in Bihar (comprising the BJP, JD(U) and the LJP) and also silenced those criticising the JD(U) strongman.

“It will be better if now onwards Chirag observes coalition dharma and uses measured language before making any statements which would, otherwise, confuse the NDA voters,” averred JD(U)’s secretary general K C Tyagi, in a snub to the junior Paswan.

The JD(U) sermon to the LJP was also an indirect message to a section of the BJP, which always wanted projection of a new face. “In Bihar, there is no substitute for Nitish. He is a credible face who established the rule of law and gave good governance,” said Nitish’s key aide and his Cabinet colleague Ashok Choudhary.

The BJP, which has never groomed or projected an alternate to Nitish, knows this very well and, therefore, has no choice other than to bet again on the JD(U) strongman.