From Jal Khambata
NEW DELHI: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar(71) is waiting for the Makar Sankranti festival to start a new challenge to Prime Minister Modi on January 15 in the battle for the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
He will be touring Bihar before that and then leave the state for Tejaswi Yadav (33) to manage. He is the most credible face among the opposition leaders as nobody can accuse him of corruption or hobnobbing with the money bags. He has already gathered support of Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren(47), Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav (49) and Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Jayanti Chaudhary (44).
He has also approached former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda for the merger of his Janata Dal(U) and Janata Dal(S) into the Janata Dal, a combination of the socialists. Nitish Kumar has many qualities to unite the opposition parties as he is 24-carat honest, has more political experience than Modi, and the administrative experience, while the only minus point in his case is no backing of the corporate world that is still with the BJP.
Nitish is also in touch with Maratha leader Sharad Pawar to mobilise the people in Maharashtra in league with former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. In Telangana, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has changed his party’s name from Telangana Rashtra Samithi to Bharat Rashtra Samithi, but he does not enjoy the kind of support that Nitish may garner.
That way Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP jumped into the poll arena with just Rs 2 crore given to him by activist advocate Prashant Bhushan and his father, a former union law minister and what followed was the corporate sector opening the purse strings, something that may happen in case of Nitish Kumar too as there are an umpteen number of top industrialists who are up set over the way Modi has been promoting on a selective band of friends. Kejriwal was able to defeat both the Congress and the BJP in Delhi elections. It also shows that the corporate sector is meaningless if the people are with you, an attempt by all opposition parties to join hands to first oust Modi from power.
Other aspirant to be the PM is West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, but she has not been able to befriend various parties, including the Congress, despite her two trips to Delhi to unite the parties proving fruitless. A shrewd Nitish Kumar only last week claimed he has no problem if the Opposition is led by Rahul Gandhi for the PM’s post, noting that the Congress is the only party that has roots in every state and Rahul has emerged as the leader to take on Modi, thanks to his Bharat Jodo Yatra. He knows Tamil Nadu CM M K Stalin may also fall in line through his DMK’s tie-up with the Congress. He is also trying to rope in Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati as he knows the necessity of a Dalit to join his combination. Himself being an OBC leader alike Modi, Nitish also enjoys support of the Muslims and tribals, courtesy Hemant Soren.
As Sharad Pawar and CPM leader Sitaram Yechuri have stressed, all parties may not come together to contest the elections unitedly, but there is a possibility of a post-poll alliance if each party garners maximum seats in own areas of influence.
Home Minister Amit Shah, the poll Chanakya of the BJP, is well aware that Nitish Kumar can prove to be a spoiler in Modi’s third term as the CM. In 2019, Modi swept 115 out of 134 seats in Bihar, UP and Jharkhand to help him come to power for the second time as his NDA bagged 39 out of 40 seats in Bihar, 64 out of 80 in UP and 12 out of 14 in Jharkhand. Howsoever the BJP’s Chanakya try, he cannot have the same victories in 2024 since Nitish Kumar is no longer in the NDA and the BJP cannot count on the same seats from UP and Jharkhand.
Nitish has also dropped the hint that he may shift, alike Modi, from Bihar to UP to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Allahabad or Phoolpur and turn the tables on Chief Minister Yogi by playing his OBC card, with the support of Akhilesh and Jayant, who recently won the Khatoli seat despite the area being the stronghold of the BJP.
So wait for the political equations emerge post-Makar Sankranti. Prime Minister Modi is contemplating the last changes in his Cabinet, while Nitish Kumar will come out with the strategy he is quietly planning to become an alternative to Modi.
