Friday, 17 May, 2024
There are no permanent enemies, no permanent friends, only permanent interests. Nitish Kumar is the perfect epitome of this adage
Rise, fall and rise of RJD
The RJD is the single largest party with 79 MLAs followed by the BJP with its 77 MLAs. The revival of RJD post the arrest of Lalu Prasad Yadav, its speculator performance in 2015 and its return to power after breaking ties with JDU in 2017 is a story in itself. The party, now led by Tejashwi Yadav was written off by political pundits a few years back. Lalu Prasad who broke away from Janta Dal to form this party in 1997 is the happiest man right now. The socialist leader first came to power in Bihar in 1990 and very soon became the lodestar of the Mandal age when he stopped the rath yatra of LK Advani in September that year. In doing so, Lalu Yadav had engineered a powerful equation that merged the Muslim and Yadav communities which enabled the RJD to remain in power till 2005. Nitish Kumar along with BJP managed to halt RJD’s run in Bihar politics.
RJD's decline continued for atleast a decade. In 2010, RJD was restricted to 22 seats in the assembly elections. In the 2009 as well as 2014 Loksabha elections, the party managed to win only four seats. It could not open its account in 2019. For many the decline in RJD’s political fortune appeared terminal, with very little hope of recovery.
It all changed in 2013 when Nitish dumped the BJP over the issue of the candidature of Narendra Modi as prime minister. RJD was back in power, first by giving outside support to Nitish (who had installed Jitan Ram Manjhi as CM) and then by forming the "Mahagathbandhan" in 2015. Lalu and Nitish together gave the biggest blow to BJP by winning 177 seats in 242-member Bihar assembly, reducing the BJP’s tally to 53. Although the grand alliance managed to remain power just 26 months after Nitish decided to join the saffron front.
What came to transpire in Patna in the past few months may be about more than just the provincial ambitions of a politician whose trapeze act has resumed overhead. Given his flip-flops, his reliability is seen as deeply questionable. He may have won over Lalu and Tejashwi Yadav, but he will now have to convince people that his new team is for keeps. It will also be interesting to see how Bihar will influence the course and velocity of winds in the neighbourhood.
