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The expansion of the Bihar Council of Ministers — seven new members, all from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have been inducted — is the clearest public statement that the party wants to rewrite its terms of engagement with its partner, the Janata Dal (United), or the JD(U). The BJP now has 21 of 36 cabinet positions, while the JD(U) has 13, including Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. The Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) has one Minister while the remaining post is an independent. With the Assembly elections only a few months away, the BJP has made it clear to the JD(U) that it will now act as the senior partner of the alliance. The expansion was after Mr. Kumar’s meeting with BJP president J.P. Nadda and just ahead of the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the State, marking an early beginning of the election campaign in his characteristic style. The Assembly election in 2020 was a turning point. The JD(U) contested 115 seats but won only 43, while the BJP won 74 out of the 110 seats it contested. The partners flipped their positions within the alliance, with the BJP emerging as the senior partner after playing a supportive role to Mr. Kumar for nearly four decades. The BJP conceded the Chief Minister’s post to Mr. Kumar in order to avoid any potential blowback from the Extremely Backward Classes (EBC) which continue to support Mr. Kumar.
At 73, Mr. Kumar is younger to both Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is 74, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)’s Lalu Prasad Yadav, who is 76, the other key figure in Bihar. The JD(U) supremo, however, is at a vulnerable moment in his career after having been the Chief Minister for two decades, hopping between the RJD and the BJP for partnership. The BJP is trying to capitalise on this and consolidate its dominance. The caste composition of its Ministers is a clear indicator of the party’s strategy to directly engage with a wide array of communities and reduce its dependence on Mr. Kumar even further. This is in keeping with a pattern that the BJP has been following over the years — the party reaches out to newer electorates by making alliances with parties first and then gradually expands its own direct contacts with them. The most recent example of this was in Maharashtra where the BJP replaced the Shiv Sena as the dominant party. While Mr. Kumar may sense the danger involved in his partnership with the BJP, his options are limited. Having switched between the BJP and the RJD several times in the past, he only managed to delay, but not avoid, this moment of utter helplessness.
Published – March 01, 2025 12:20 am IST
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Turning point: on the BJP, JD(U) and politics in Bihar
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