As the Bihar election campaign enters its homestretch, the verdict in less than a week, Lalu Prasad Yadav, the aging RJD patriarch, has remained largely in the wings as son Tejashwi takes centrestage in his bid to defeat the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government.
Lalu, who has been ailing, does not look his usual buoyant self. If anything, he looks grim and restless, as he meets The Indian Express, sitting on the solitary chair in the verandah at Patna’s 10, Circular Road, the official residence of his wife, the RJD’s Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council, and former chief minister Rabri Devi.
Lalu strikes a different note when asked what the focus of the Mahagathbandhan government would be if it came to power. “Is baar hum berozgari ko dur karenge (This time, we will rid the state of unemployment)… We are going to form the government – and we are going to remove Nitish Kumar.”
On the possibility of another tie-up with the JD(U) in case the numbers don’t add up, Lalu is categorical. “Ab hum Nitish Kumar ko sweekar nahin karenge (We will not accept Nitish Kumar again)…We are not in contact with Nitish.”
Lalu’s disclaimer notwithstanding, Bihar is abuzz with speculation that Nitish may do another “palta (U-turn)”, if he is not made Chief Minister by the BJP in the event of an NDA victory — and if the arithmetic of the new Assembly means a Mahagathbandhan sarkar can be formed with the JD(U)’s help.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah earlier set the cat among the pigeons when he said that while the NDA was fighting the election under Nitish’s leadership, the CM would be chosen by the newly elected MLAs. It did not go down well with the Nitish camp.
Though several NDA leaders have asserted subsequently that Nitish would be the CM if the coalition returned to power, the question continues to tantalise. In the last few days, the PM has praised Nitish even more than usual for all that he has done for Bihar, while attacking the “jungle raj” of Lalu.
Arraigned against each other, Lalu and Nitish have been the ace political jodi of Bihar who have shaped and reshaped the state’s politics over the last 35 years – as rivals yet collaborators. They have opposed each other at times but also come to each other’s rescue.
The astute politician that he is, Nitish, some have pointed out, has maintained the relevance of the Lalu Prasad family by joining hands with the RJD in 2015 and again in 2022, and inducting son Tejashwi as Deputy CM on both occasions. If Nitish did not hurt Lalu beyond a point, the RJD chief, in turn, let him lead the Mahagathbandhan government instead of insisting on the CM post for the RJD when they were in alliance.
Nitish knew that if the political hold of the Yadav First Family weakened, the Yadavs might start to gravitate towards the BJP, making it a player on its own. Nitish might then have got squeezed out of the picture.
At the same time, Nitish has also fashioned an alliance of the Kurmi-Koeris, the Extremely Backward Classes who left Lalu in 2005 – alienated by his promotion of the Yadavs at their cost – and the ‘Mahadalits’, clubbing together the more marginalised, non-Paswan Dalits. This has given the JD(U) leader the numbers he needs, being of a community, Kurmi, that is only 2.8% of the population, as opposed to Lalu’s Yadavs, who are at over 14%.
Nitish’s decision to break away from Lalu, and align with the BJP and its upper-caste base, added to this vote bank. And thus began the Nitish era in Bihar politics in 2005.
The JD(U) leader has successfully sustained this by keeping the BJP in check, just as he ensured that Lalu and his family remained relevant. Many point to the free hand given by CM Nitish to bureaucrats to deal with any communal conflagration as an example of this. There is hardly any anti-Muslim feeling in Bihar, and many will tell you this, unlike, say, in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh.
Politics in Bihar hence has come to revolve around the trio of the BJP, RJD and JD(U). Since the RJD will not join hands with the BJP, whoever the JD(U) joined hands with has formed the government in the recent past, with Nitish remaining the CM.
The 2025 poll scenario has seen the entry of a fourth entity – the Jan Suraaj, led by “disruptor” Prashant Kishor, who has accused both Lalu and Nitish of “destroying” Bihar.
Today, Lalu, who broke the hold of the upper castes in the state’s politics and paved the way for Nitish, is viewed as the “past”. However, insiders say that he played an important role in deciding the RJD tickets. And when the seat-sharing process almost got derailed, with the Congress refusing to project Tejashwi as the CM face of the Mahagathbandhan, it was Lalu who intervened between the RJD and Congress to retrieve the situation.
Still, as the solitary figure he cut at 10, Circular Road, shows, the RJD is not keen to put him in the foreground, in either posters, hoardings, or the campaign. He is virtually being kept under wraps – lest he trigger off a controversy which reminds people of the “jungle raj” – even as Tejashwi projects a “sober”, forward-looking image of the RJD, focusing on “jobs, jobs and jobs” and projecting the “MY” base of the party as not just “Muslim” and “Yadav” but also “Mahila” and “Youth”.
If the question of what after Lalu hangs in the air, so does what after Nitish, who has not identified a successor or built a second line of leadership. With Nitish in indifferent health, many wrote him off.
However, in the election campaign where there is no “aakrosh (anger)” visible against him – though there is anti-incumbency against the NDA MLAs – Nitish has been campaigning vigorously. He may also have another masterstroke with the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana, announced just before the polls, under which the first instalment of Rs 10,000 has been paid into the accounts of over 1.2 crore women.
Bihar 2025 is undoubtedly about a transition taking place to the “future”, in the shape of Tejashwi and Kishor, and also LJP (RV) chief Chirag Paswan and BJP leader Samrat Choudhary. But for now, Nitish and Lalu, even as they grapple with health problems, continue to dominate the discourse.
Whether Masauri, Barachetti, Piparghatti, Bodh Gaya, Gaya, Saran or Patna, when people talk about their voting preferences, they express it as, “We will vote for Nitish (even if the candidate belongs to JD-U allies HAM-S, LJP-RV, or the BJP)”, or they refer to Lalu.