NEW DELHI/PATNA: When JD(U) announced that its leader Nitish Kumar would skip the PM Narendra Modi-inspired public celebration of International Yoga Day on Thursday, the party explained that while the Bihar CM practised yoga, he saw it as an activity best conducted privately.
However, few viewed Kumar's absence from the Yoga Day celebrations as just an innocuous divergence between allies over how to execute callisthenics, and not without reason.
The latest of a growing list of disagreements among the allies came amid growing pressure from JD(U) to finalise the issue of who gets to contest how many seats in the Lok Sabha polls and accord Kumar the primacy he enjoyed in the alliance until he broke away in June 2013 to protest against BJP's choice of Modi as its PM candidate.
JD(U)'s restlessness shows that Kumar and BJP did not not care to tie all the loose ends when they dramatically decided to kiss and make up in July last year, with Kumar dumping Lalu Prasad and Congress to return to BJP's embrace.
Shotgun marriages are notorious for going awry, with incongruities undermining the pledges of co-existence once the initial warmth has ebbed. Yet, few would have expected the renewed partnership to start fraying so soon. Nitish appeared to have done his share of pirouettes when he, in a span of two years, walked out on BJP and teamed up with his sworn rival Lalu Prasad allegedly to rid the country of RSS only to return to the saffron fold. The dizzying turns had, people thought, exhausted the room for him to try more turnabouts.
Kumar, however, has defied the estimate by raising the ante over the number of seats which he wants BJP to leave for him. Before the 2013 break-up, he had ruthlessly stamped his 'big brother' status by securing 25 of the 40 LS seats, an ascendancy which was achieved in a creeping way and which could have continued had he not walked out.
The revolt turned out to be a political misadventure, with his party managing to win just two of the 40 seats from Bihar. It also forced him to have a tie-up, brokered by Congress, with Lalu. The alliance worked and helped by goodwill for Kumar and Lalu's grip over Yadavs and Muslims, trounced BJP.
Now, JD(U) wants results of the 2015 assembly polls, in which it fared better than BJP, to be the basis of deciding how many seats the four NDA partners contest in the state. In 2015, JD(U) had won 71 of the 243 seats, while BJP emerged victorious in 53 seats and LJP and RLSP in two each. JD(U) was then an ally of RJD and Congress.
The insistence that Kumar be treated as 'senior partner' has been getting increasingly vehement. JD(U) is in no mood to drop its demand for an "honourable" share, arguing that the Modi wave which helped BJP and its allies sweep 32 of Bihar's seats has abated. In fact, it argues that there is disillusionment with BJP on the ground.
"NDA should take advantage of Nitish Kumar's popularity and his good governance in Bihar. It was, in fact, Kumar's face for which the 'grand alliance' performed so well in the 2015 assembly elections. As far as seat-sharing is concerned, we hope all NDA constituents will sort it out with consensus at the earliest," JD(U) secretary general K C Tyagi said.
The demand creates complications for BJP. Though it sees itself as the "undisputed favourite" for the 2019 contest, it is not complacent about the efforts to stitch together alliances to neutralise its widely acknowledged edge. Having lost TDP and being kept on tenterhooks by Shiv Sena, it is constrained to humour existing and potential partners. More importantly, an alliance with Kumar should make it the clear front-runner in Bihar.
