Patna,(BiharTimes): If they are really brothers then Bade Bhai (Lalu Prasad) and Chote Bhai (Nitish Kumar) should have merged their respective parties after they came together following 17-long years of estranged relationship. One such idea came into the mind of Nitish when he not only tried to merge his party Janata Dal (United) with Rashtriya Janata Dal, but with half a dozen parties of Janata Parivar with Mulayam Singh Yadav as its head. The Bihar chief minister in March 2015 even went to meet Indian National Lok Dal leader, Om Prakah Chautala in Tihar Jail, Delhi. He was widely criticised for going to rison to call on the former Haryana chief minister, who along with his son, was convicted in a corruption case.
However, the whole move was spiked by Mulayam’s cousin Ram Gopal Yadav in May 2015. Things were back to square one for him. In this political scenario Nitish wants to be in company with Lalu––in fact they both need each other––yet the JD(U) president wants to maintain a safe distance. He wanted to merge the six parties of Jnata Parivar as in that case he would get more than one friend within to balance Lalu’s influence. Dealing elder––if not big––brother Lalu one-to-one is a bit difficult for him. It is other thing that the idea did not click.
But when Nitish was in other family, Sangh Parivar, his attitude was no different. It is other thing that the media did not use to highlight it much. His party contested election separately in Gujarat, Delhi, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. During 2012 Assembly election in Uttar Pradesh he campaigned with full force and at several places damaged the poll prospect of alliance partner, the BJP, which fared poorly then.
Later in the same year Nitish went on to support UPA’s Presidential candidate, Pranab Mukherjee, and not the NDA’s P A Sangma. Earlier, when Nitish on June 12, 2010 cancelled the dinner of BJP bigwigs on the occasion of national executive meeting of the saffron party in Patna just because the then Gujarat CM, Narendra Modi, was attending it, a big political storm gathered in Bihar. A week later Nitish returned Rs five crore donated by the Gujarat government during the 2008 Kosi flood.
On various TV channels BJP and JD(U) leaders were seen locked in great verbal duels. The most famous one was between the then JD(U) MP, Monazir Hasan, and Nitish’s minister and BJP leader Giriraj Singh (now in Modi cabinet.). Yet the two parties fought unitedly a few months later and swept it.
Not only that when Nitish launched his state-wide ‘Yatra’ and organized Adhikar rallies in Patna and New Delhi in 2012-13 to press for the special category status for Bihar he completely ignored the alliance partner, the BJP.
The BJP people did not sit quietly. When Nitish toured Bihar then he was confronted by big crowd of para-teachers protesting against him and demanding regularization of service. In Khagaria the mob of teachers stoned him. He had to be bailed out by notorious strongman, Ranvir Yadav, husband of JD(U) MLA, Poonam Devi. Ranvir snatched a gun from his securityman and fired in the air to disperse the mob. It was then said that the para-teachers had been enjoying the patronage of the BJP.
Thus a close study of Nitish’s political career reveals that be it with the BJP or RJD, he had always adopted a unique stand and kept everyone guessing. His critics would blame him for adopting use it and
throw it politics while his supporters admire him for leading the party in his own inevitable style.
