The daily ups and downs of politics in Uttar Pradesh seem to be making ripples in the ruling alliance in Bihar. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is making a concerted bid to expand his party, the Janata Dal (United), outside the state. On the other hand, his alliance partner, Lalu Prasad of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, has vowed to address rallies to seek votes for the ruling Samajwadi Party in the neighbouring state, which goes to polls early next year.
Insinuations that the RJD and the SP are working in tandem while the JD(U) has pitted itself against this axis in Uttar Pradesh took on concrete expression on September 24 when SP leader Amar Singh took a dig at Kumar in Patna.
“It is the greatness of Lalu Prasad that he has made Nitish Kumar, who had sent him to jail, the chief minister of Bihar,” said Singh, who is considered SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s lieutenant. “Nitish Kumar’s chair of chief ministership is fully dependent on the support of Lalu Prasad.”
Silence on the part of the ruling partners in Bihar following Singh’s remarks speaks of the strain in the relationship between the RJD and the JD(U).
Just a year ago, the two parties had joined hands and convincingly trounced the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Assembly elections in Bihar. The government formed thereafter seemed rock solid. Lalu Prasad, who emerged as the state’s secular patriarch, vowed to take the battle against the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to every part of the country.
While little came of the RJD chief’s claim, Kumar, on his part, started working on expanding his party beyond Bihar early on. In the name of pitching his prohibition plan as a big social movement in Bihar’s neighbourhood, he began addressing meetings, rallies and other events in Uttar Pradesh. It did not take him long to develop political stakes in the state, where he has pitted himself directly against the BJP and the ruling SP.
Lalu-Mulayam meeting
Making it clear that he was not on Kumar’s side in Uttar Pradesh, Lalu Prasad – who enjoys familial ties with Yadav [his youngest daughter is married to Yadav’s grand nephew] – sent a strong signal to his alliance partner on September 14 when he met the SP chief and promised to campaign for his party.
“All parties have their own politics,” RJD leader Prem Chand Gupta, who accompanied Lalu on his meeting with Yadav, told the media. “Lalu-ji has said that we will deploy our full force behind Samajwadi Party to check communal forces. We will not allow the BJP to make gains there.”
The meeting between the two Yadav leaders came close on the heels of former RJD MP Mohammad Shahabuddin stirring up a political storm in Bihar by calling Kumar a “chief minister of circumstance” – a remark quickly endorsed by RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh.
It is this strain in ties, caused partly by antagonistic positions in UP and partly by sporadic bickering in Bihar, that was reflected in Amar Singh’s remarks. It would be – as it stands now – premature to expect the strain to turn into a real crack in Bihar’s ruling coalition, with both parties having a stake in preventing this from happening.
But tensions are rising, stoked clearly by old rivalries and vastly different political visions.
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