Monsoon Session: Grand Alliance smoothly overcomes differences

Patna,(BiharTimes): The week long brief Monsoon Session of Bihar Assembly ended on Thursday with chief minister Nitish Kumar succeeding in getting the Bihar Excise and Prohibition Bill 2016 passed somewhat smoothly.

Though several RJD and Congress legislators had problems with some of the stringent provisions of the Bill and Lalu Prasad too expressed his reservation yet everything went on well after the government removed toddy from the list of ban intoxicants.

Media pundits were a bit surprised on the way the Janata Dal (United), RJD and Congress sorted out their differences. There is no dearth of political observers who were prepared to write obituary of the Grand Alliance on this issue.

However, one thing is clear. Neiither of the three constituents of the Grand Alliance want to jeopardize their relationship on any such issue for obvious reason.

RJD and Congress had been out of power for quite some time and they would not like any issue to go out of proportion. Lalu Prasad knows his weakness so do Nitish Kumar, whose party has only 71 MLAs against 118 at one point of time in the last Assembly.

They all know that they are in power because of this alliance. If not the BJP-led alliance may replace them.

So Lalu may do something for public posturing but would not do any harm to the present set up. On the other hand Nitish had its own political ambition––many analysts think misplaced.

The RJD chief knows that he can himself not enter any House because of the court verdict. He has got his sons and daughter politically planted. On the other hand the Congress with 27 MLAs have made a big comeback simply because of the Grand Alliance. Alone it may be difficult for the party to even win one or two seats.

Nitish has seen what has happened to him in 2014 notwithstanding the tall claims of doing so much for Bihar.

Thus the Grand Alliance is likely to continue in Bihar for time to come.