2 months ago
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Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) main Nitish Kumar is relinquishing his station and stepping speech from progressive politics. A nominee from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) volition apt win him arsenic Chief Minister. Though the crook of events appears abrupt, it has been successful the making for respective years, and follows a signifier of the BJP’s enlargement into newer areas and societal groups. Mr. Kumar has oscillated betwixt the BJP and the Congress-led Opposition implicit the years, and inactive commands the loyalty of a sizeable conception of Other Backward Classes (OBC) successful the State. At 75, aged property had impaired him, and though his diminution has been successful afloat nationalist view, helium remained successful the saddle — a grounds to his governmental indispensability. In the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept 202 of 243 seats, with the BJP emerging arsenic the azygous largest enactment with 89 seats against the JD(U)’s 85. The BJP was initially unwilling to state Mr. Kumar arsenic the NDA’s main ministerial candidate, adjacent portion calculating that the confederation could not spend to contention without him. Less than 4 months aft taking oath arsenic Chief Minister for a grounds tenth time, helium filed his Rajya Sabha information connected March 5, with Union Home Minister Amit Shah by his side. The BJP is navigating a precise good line, trying to mildly propulsion Mr. Kumar speech without toppling the pome cart of the societal operation that holds assorted Hindu caste groups together. Any consciousness of insult to the OBCs tin beryllium politically costly; but the enactment is arsenic determined to formalise its primacy successful Bihar politics, a information connected the crushed since astatine slightest the 2020 Assembly election, erstwhile it won 74 seats to the JD(U)’s 43.
The modulation successful Bihar besides aligns with the four-decade signifier of the BJP’s growth. The Hindutva enactment finds a foothold successful caller areas and among caller societal groups done alliances with determination outfits first, past emerges connected top, and yet replaces the erstwhile ally. In 2020, the BJP already outran the JD(U) successful spot tally but swallowed its ambition to support the conjugation intact and Mr. Kumar successful place. In 2025, it retained that pb — 89 to 85 — and the arithmetic of the Rajya Sabha vacancy provided the occasion, and a measurement of cover, for the inevitable transition. Bihar is the latest lawsuit successful this pattern, pursuing the template astir precocious disposable successful Maharashtra, wherever Assembly elections were fought nether Eknath Shinde’s sanction but Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP took the Chief Minister’s seat aft the Mahayuti victory. With the eclipse of Mr. Kumar, the societal justness authorities that Bihar has practised for the past half-century — rooted successful Lohiaite assertion, OBC mobilisation, and a absorption to precocious caste dominance — is turning a page. It has a definite finality astir it.
