Barely six months after the Bihar Assembly elections, there are stories about relations being “not so cordial” between the Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal in the ruling coalition. The tension, it appears, draws not so much from policies but is more political in nature. While Chief Minister Nitish Kumar remains far more popular than his young Deputy Chief Minister, Tejaswi Yadav, his JD(U) has fewer MLAs in the House than Mr. Yadav’s RJD.
In a recent interview, Lalu Prasad, RJD president and Mr. Yadav’s father, was asked about Mr. Kumar’s “janata darbar” every Monday. He replied that while he does not hold “sarkari darbars”, his doors are open morning onwards, without appointment, clearly trying to convey that he is equally, if not more, popular in the State.
These tensions are present alongside the RJD leadership’s emphatic support in projecting Mr. Kumar as a suitable candidate to be the prime ministerial face of a non-BJP political alliance. It was reiterated recently when Mr. Kumar was elected JD(U) chief. This endorsement is hardly surprising, as the RJD president is ruled out of the electoral race till the next Lok Sabha elections due to his conviction by a Central Bureau of Investigation court in the fodder scam. For his part, Mr. Kumar said on the occasion: “We are attempting a unity at the national level in the same way we forged a Grand Alliance in Bihar. Who will lead it can be decided at the right time.”
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However, lack of support to Mr. Kumar leading an anti-Modi front is likely to come from other parties countrywide. There is hardly any doubt that there is a leadership vacuum at this moment, and sensing Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s hesitation to take the fight to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leaders of other regional parties too are likely to harbour national ambitions.
It is not difficult to imagine Mamata Banerjee or Jayalalithaa, if they succeed in being re-elected as Chief Ministers of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, respectively, shifting their gaze to the Centre. Or Naveen Patnaik, who has now been Chief Minister of Odisha for almost two decades continuously. And certainly, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal misses no chance to remind voters that he is the only national alternative to Mr. Modi. Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav may have relinquished the post of Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh for his son, but if there is any effort in cobbling together a united front to take on the BJP, he is not likely to wait even a minute before throwing his hat into the ring. And then, why would the Maratha leader Sharad Pawar fall behind?
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The success of the Grand Alliance in Bihar elections led to much speculation about its replication at the national level. To revive that enthusiasm the JD(U) and RJD would also have to learn the lesson from experiments in forging anti-Congress fronts in the past. The anti-Congress front in the mid-1970s (the Janata Party experiment) and in late 1980s (led by V.P. Singh) turned out to be short-lived. Both these experiments at the national level failed not because people did not repose faith in them. The Janata Party was voted to power in 1977, so was V.P. Singh’s alliance in 1989. But neither survived for long, only because their leaders could not accommodate each other’s egos for the larger cause of keeping the Congress out of power.
These current stirrings of a non-BJP alliance will find resonance only if its constituents make it clear that they have staying power.
Sanjay Kumar is Professor and currently the Director of Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. Views expressed are personal