As the countdown to the crucial Bihar Assembly elections begins, it is becoming increasingly clear that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is treading warily. Having won the battle to be projected as the chief ministerial candidate of the Janata Dal(United)-Rashtriya Janata Dal combine (likely to be backed by the Congress), he is determined publicly — and, indeed, privately — not to be rattled by reports that there is trouble between the allies.
For Mr. Kumar, the October elections will perhaps be the biggest political test to date, and he is not taking it lightly. For, his party has already paid a heavy price for its conscious decision to break with the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2014. In 2009, the party won 20 seats; in 2014, it got just two.
Mobilising casteThe JD(U) leadership, top sources in the party said, is conscious of the odds it is up against. One critical factor worrying the party is that over the past few years, the BJP’s Bihar unit has been consciously working among individual Other Backward Classes and Scheduled Caste communities, mobilising their support.
JD(U) sources told The Hindu that Mr. Kumar, who belongs to the OBC community of Kurmis, numerically not as significant as, say, the Yadavs who constitute at least 11 per cent of the population, had worked during his tenure as Chief Minister to build larger social agglomerations — the Economically Backward Castes (or Most Backward Castes) and the Mahadalits (which excludes, say, the powerful Paswans) — to bolster his support base.
But with the BJP seeking to disaggregate these agglomerations, the JD(U) is once again seeking to counter these efforts. One weapon the party and its ally, the RJD, have is to pressure the Narendra Modi government to release swiftly the caste census data under the Socio Economic and Caste Census, 2011. Realising its potential for damage, the Centre has announced the setting up of the Panagriya Committee that will put together the data, once it is submitted by various States.
Simultaneously, with the BJP thus far indicating that it has no plans to project anyone as chief ministerial candidate, relying instead on Narendra Modi’s appeal to garner votes, Mr. Kumar, taking a leaf out of the Prime Minister’s own book — is focussing on a campaign centred on his personality.
For this, two months ago, he hired image-maker Prashant Kishor, who played a key role in Mr. Modi’s campaign in the 2014 general election.
Mr. Kishor is also being credited with designing Mr. Kumar’s Har Ghar Dastak , an ambitious door-to-door campaign for the State elections that kicked off earlier this month. The plan is for about 10 lakh JD(U) workers to fan out across the State, to reach one crore homes, marking each visit with a Nitish Kumar sticker.
Seat sharingBut, in the end, much will depend on how the JD(U) and the RJD collaborate on the ground. The JD(U) wants the 2010 Assembly poll results to determine the sharing of seats. In that election, the JD(U) won 115 seats with 22.6 per cent, the RJD just 22 seats, though it polled 18.84 per cent. That happened, of course, because the JD(U) was in alliance with the BJP. Now the RJD wants the 2014 general election results to be factored in as it won four Lok Sabha seats against the JD(U)’s two.
It is for this reason that the JD(U) is keen on postponing the announcement of its candidates till a very late stage in the campaign, top sources told The Hindu , hoping that by then, Mr. Kumar’s charisma will have done the trick.
