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The man the BJP can’t replace
Radhika Ramaseshan | Nov 17, 2025, 04:00 IST
He was written off by rivals and pundits. But Nitish Kumar’s welfare politics and women-centric outreach in Bihar trumped caste arithmetic again, even as the BJP quietly prepares for a post-Nitish future
On the day the Bihar election schedule was announced, a cocky Tejashwi Yadav, whose Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) is about to be wiped out, asserted that the party was over for Nitish Kumar, the chief minister, and his Janata Dal (United) or JD(U), because the electorate sorely wanted a regime change. Nitish didn’t answer Tejashwi’s claim. Indeed, his silence added to the interminable speculation over the state of his health, suggesting that he was about to walk into oblivion after the Assembly polls.
His former associate, the ideology-agnostic Prashant Kishor, who has been a political strategist to every party, had floated the Jan Suraaj Party and spoke a language distinctly out of tune with Bihar’s traditional campaign templates — no caste or communalism. Kishor’s long-drawn, state-wide peregrination focused on bread-and-butter issues and the state government’s alleged failure to address fundamental concerns related to employment and development.
Kishor’s messages ought to have touched a raw nerve in the CM, who earned a cachet as Bihar’s “sushasan babu” (governance leader), but Nitish did not counter the eager-beaver Kishor, determined to make a mark.
The stunning verdict in favour of the BJP-JD(U) and their associates not only stamped voters’ desire for the continuity of a 20-year rule — in which, for the most part, Nitish stayed put with his ally — but also emphasised the centrality of the leader in the state’s politics, something most BJP regional partners cannot boast of because their association with the party often diminished their own stature on their turfs. Unless the BJP has other designs, it seems set to anoint Nitish as the CM again.
He led and won for the NDA its best-ever performance in Bihar so far. He improved on his own showing, from picking up 43 seats in 2020 to 75 this time. Yet would the fact that the BJP is ahead of the JD(U) by about 10 seats worry Nitish, given that their subterranean rivalry — manifest on past occasions — might erupt into something big in the foreseeable future?
Five years ago, the BJP — which privately still smarts at the insults thrown at PM Narendra Modi by Nitish in 2010 at a party conclave in Patna, when Modi was the Gujarat CM — outpaced the JD(U) by 31 seats. The JD(U)’s suspicion, not without basis, was that the BJP had encouraged young legatee Chirag Paswan, who heads the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas Paswan), to poach Nitish’s Extremely Backward Caste (EBC) and Mahadalit base by contesting independently. If true, the strategy worked. Paswan took away Nitish’s votes.
This time, the BJP did not score self-goals. It sewed up a cohesive coalition where Chirag Paswan worked with the JD(U) and the other entities. The effort paid off. Yet the shadow cast by the BJP leadership’s unwillingness to emphatically declare Nitish as the NDA’s CM candidate lingered on until the party, pressured by its Bihar leaders, realised its reluctance might become counterproductive and overwhelm the other messages it wanted to disseminate. Nitish is the leader, the BJP stressed.
While Nitish might savour the satisfaction of humbling his former comrade-turned-adversary Lalu Prasad and his son, Tejashwi, would a brassy BJP, emboldened by its emergence as prospectively the single largest party, be as indulgent towards him as in the past? Its Bihar unit, which for long dreamt of ruling the state independent of any ally, looked at Odisha as an example. The BJP’s tactic of shaking off its on-off ally, the Biju Janata Dal, paid off in the 2024 polls. The state leaders need a fillip of the intensity they experienced today to ignite the “ekla chalo re” tune.
But Nitish is not Naveen Patnaik. He remains indispensable to the BJP. More importantly, both sides pragmatically realised there was no point in harping on past wounds that will never heal but in using each other’s resources to get on with the business of governance. Nitish is bereft of his old friends in the BJP like Sushil Modi (who passed away in 2024), Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, but their absence did not deter him from dealing with Modi, notwithstanding the past rancour.
The double-engine “sarkar” was used to his advantage to draw funds to underwrite his elaborate social schemes like the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rozgar Yojana, intended to provide Rs 10,000 to one woman in every eligible family as seed money to set up an enterprise, with the promise of additional aid of up to Rs 2 lakh if their initiative took off.
Nitish’s centrality is also borne out by his skills in taking the Mandalisation process forward to cultivate a constituency that transcended his own caste votes of Kurmis to include the neglected EBCs and Mahadalits — and, more crucially, women.
There’s little evidence to prove that women shook off their caste labels and voted for the NDA, but the extraordinary turnout in the just-concluded polls was largely catalysed by women who benefited from the raft of schemes Nitish thought up in his tenures: free bicycles and uniforms to augment the turnout of girls in schools, prohibition (which also had its drawbacks but was largely welcomed by women subject to domestic violence), gender-based reservations in local bodies, government jobs and the police force, and finally, the impetus for entrepreneurship.
It’s possible that women have evolved into a constituency autonomous of the men in their families, and if that is established, it’s a huge development in heartland politics, where even elected women “pradhans” are yoked to their spouses, fathers, or brothers.
Lalu Prasad’s concept of Mandal-isation worked in the early years when the Mandal Commission’s proposals were implemented, but his idea of empowerment was limited and exhausted itself.
The alliance with the BJP helped to the extent that the upper castes shed their antipathy for an OBC leader like Nitish after he demonstrated that he was more than willing to work with a party that was the first choice of the Brahmins, Bhumihars and Rajputs. The Congress attempted to walk the same path by aligning with the RJD, believing that its former “savarna” voters would return to the Mahagathbandhan despite Lalu Prasad, but it was a futile tactic.
However, the sweet taste of victory and another term might not last forever. Nitish is up against challenges. Will the BJP allow him to complete another term and further consolidate his position? It’s a tricky call to stay the course, but Nitish astutely resisted the temptation of inducting his son, Nishant Kumar, into the JD(U) despite his colleagues’ pressure once reports of his not being in the best of health started circulating. He is aware of Modi’s aversion to “parivarwaad”.
Nitish’s politics hasn’t accommodated Hindutva to the extent the BJP would like him to. Will a stronger BJP grant him this privilege in his next term? The BJP has tasted big-time success in Bihar and would want to build on the foundation in its tried-and-tested ways. Fostering its ideology is one such prong. Nitish is much too down-to-earth to stall the BJP’s agenda and risk his own office — not with Modi at the Centre.
His former associate, the ideology-agnostic Prashant Kishor, who has been a political strategist to every party, had floated the Jan Suraaj Party and spoke a language distinctly out of tune with Bihar’s traditional campaign templates — no caste or communalism. Kishor’s long-drawn, state-wide peregrination focused on bread-and-butter issues and the state government’s alleged failure to address fundamental concerns related to employment and development.
Kishor’s messages ought to have touched a raw nerve in the CM, who earned a cachet as Bihar’s “sushasan babu” (governance leader), but Nitish did not counter the eager-beaver Kishor, determined to make a mark.
The stunning verdict in favour of the BJP-JD(U) and their associates not only stamped voters’ desire for the continuity of a 20-year rule — in which, for the most part, Nitish stayed put with his ally — but also emphasised the centrality of the leader in the state’s politics, something most BJP regional partners cannot boast of because their association with the party often diminished their own stature on their turfs. Unless the BJP has other designs, it seems set to anoint Nitish as the CM again.
He led and won for the NDA its best-ever performance in Bihar so far. He improved on his own showing, from picking up 43 seats in 2020 to 75 this time. Yet would the fact that the BJP is ahead of the JD(U) by about 10 seats worry Nitish, given that their subterranean rivalry — manifest on past occasions — might erupt into something big in the foreseeable future?
Five years ago, the BJP — which privately still smarts at the insults thrown at PM Narendra Modi by Nitish in 2010 at a party conclave in Patna, when Modi was the Gujarat CM — outpaced the JD(U) by 31 seats. The JD(U)’s suspicion, not without basis, was that the BJP had encouraged young legatee Chirag Paswan, who heads the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas Paswan), to poach Nitish’s Extremely Backward Caste (EBC) and Mahadalit base by contesting independently. If true, the strategy worked. Paswan took away Nitish’s votes.
This time, the BJP did not score self-goals. It sewed up a cohesive coalition where Chirag Paswan worked with the JD(U) and the other entities. The effort paid off. Yet the shadow cast by the BJP leadership’s unwillingness to emphatically declare Nitish as the NDA’s CM candidate lingered on until the party, pressured by its Bihar leaders, realised its reluctance might become counterproductive and overwhelm the other messages it wanted to disseminate. Nitish is the leader, the BJP stressed.
While Nitish might savour the satisfaction of humbling his former comrade-turned-adversary Lalu Prasad and his son, Tejashwi, would a brassy BJP, emboldened by its emergence as prospectively the single largest party, be as indulgent towards him as in the past? Its Bihar unit, which for long dreamt of ruling the state independent of any ally, looked at Odisha as an example. The BJP’s tactic of shaking off its on-off ally, the Biju Janata Dal, paid off in the 2024 polls. The state leaders need a fillip of the intensity they experienced today to ignite the “ekla chalo re” tune.
But Nitish is not Naveen Patnaik. He remains indispensable to the BJP. More importantly, both sides pragmatically realised there was no point in harping on past wounds that will never heal but in using each other’s resources to get on with the business of governance. Nitish is bereft of his old friends in the BJP like Sushil Modi (who passed away in 2024), Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, but their absence did not deter him from dealing with Modi, notwithstanding the past rancour.
The double-engine “sarkar” was used to his advantage to draw funds to underwrite his elaborate social schemes like the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rozgar Yojana, intended to provide Rs 10,000 to one woman in every eligible family as seed money to set up an enterprise, with the promise of additional aid of up to Rs 2 lakh if their initiative took off.
Nitish’s centrality is also borne out by his skills in taking the Mandalisation process forward to cultivate a constituency that transcended his own caste votes of Kurmis to include the neglected EBCs and Mahadalits — and, more crucially, women.
There’s little evidence to prove that women shook off their caste labels and voted for the NDA, but the extraordinary turnout in the just-concluded polls was largely catalysed by women who benefited from the raft of schemes Nitish thought up in his tenures: free bicycles and uniforms to augment the turnout of girls in schools, prohibition (which also had its drawbacks but was largely welcomed by women subject to domestic violence), gender-based reservations in local bodies, government jobs and the police force, and finally, the impetus for entrepreneurship.
It’s possible that women have evolved into a constituency autonomous of the men in their families, and if that is established, it’s a huge development in heartland politics, where even elected women “pradhans” are yoked to their spouses, fathers, or brothers.
Lalu Prasad’s concept of Mandal-isation worked in the early years when the Mandal Commission’s proposals were implemented, but his idea of empowerment was limited and exhausted itself.
The alliance with the BJP helped to the extent that the upper castes shed their antipathy for an OBC leader like Nitish after he demonstrated that he was more than willing to work with a party that was the first choice of the Brahmins, Bhumihars and Rajputs. The Congress attempted to walk the same path by aligning with the RJD, believing that its former “savarna” voters would return to the Mahagathbandhan despite Lalu Prasad, but it was a futile tactic.
However, the sweet taste of victory and another term might not last forever. Nitish is up against challenges. Will the BJP allow him to complete another term and further consolidate his position? It’s a tricky call to stay the course, but Nitish astutely resisted the temptation of inducting his son, Nishant Kumar, into the JD(U) despite his colleagues’ pressure once reports of his not being in the best of health started circulating. He is aware of Modi’s aversion to “parivarwaad”.
Nitish’s politics hasn’t accommodated Hindutva to the extent the BJP would like him to. Will a stronger BJP grant him this privilege in his next term? The BJP has tasted big-time success in Bihar and would want to build on the foundation in its tried-and-tested ways. Fostering its ideology is one such prong. Nitish is much too down-to-earth to stall the BJP’s agenda and risk his own office — not with Modi at the Centre.
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