On the surface, there appears to be great unity in the NDA camp. But when you look deeper, you will see that there is a lot of bitterness between Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the most powerful person in the BJP, the largest constituent party of this alliance, and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the most powerful person in the JDU. This bitterness between the two is nothing new. On the lines of the saying ‘Kahlane Ek Basat, Ahi Mayur Mrig Bagh, Jagat Tapovan So Kiye Teerth Daagh Nidagh’, they may appear to be together as NDA on the surface, but even while being in the NDA, there is an ongoing conflict between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is engaged in removing Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar from the position of Chief Minister by getting him elected to the Rajya Sabha, while Nitish Kumar, despite the BJP’s position as Chief Minister in Bihar, is engaged in the Samriddhi Yatra, plotting to have everything go under his own direction, in order to thwart Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intentions.
The history of infighting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is quite old, dating back to when Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat and Nitish Kumar was the Chief Minister of Bihar. Chief Ministers of two different states, and from the same NDA camp, mean that there is no possibility of infighting. Yet, there is still serious infighting between the two.
In 2008, a devastating disaster struck Bihar in the form of the Kosi River flood. Numerous individuals and organizations contributed funds to help with flood relief in Bihar. This donation included ₹5 crore (50 million rupees) sent by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar kept donations from others, but returned the ₹5 crore (50 million rupees) sent by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Furthermore, Nitish Kumar even canceled the Gujarat Chief Minister’s planned dinner with him. Nitish Kumar, despite contesting the 2010 assembly elections under the NDA, also forced the BJP to cancel its plan to invite Narendra Modi to Bihar as its star campaigner.
Meanwhile, the NDA led by Narendra Modi won the assembly elections in Gujarat, and the NDA led by Nitish Kumar also won the assembly elections in Bihar. However, due to mutual acrimony, neither the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, nor Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar even exchanged greetings. Even when the NDA declared Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as its next Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2014 general elections, Nitish Kumar was deeply upset. He called Narendra Modi a fanatic, a Hindu, and anti-Muslim, raising serious questions within the NDA about his candidacy as the Prime Ministerial candidate. When the BJP and the NDA refused to listen, he severed ties with the NDA and saved his government in Bihar by forming a grand alliance with the Congress and RJD.
After separating from the NDA, Nitish Kumar continued his efforts to oust Prime Minister Narendra Modi from power, contesting elections in alliance with the opposition. To defeat Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he contested elections, sometimes with opposition alliances, sometimes with the NDA, and sometimes with the Congress and RJD. In Bihar, he alternated between NDA and grand alliance forming governments with his own Chief Ministership.
Just prior to the Lok Sabha election 2024, he had formed the India Alliance, a major move to oust Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, when he saw no prospects for himself as the prime ministerial candidate under the India Alliance, he abandoned it and joined the NDA, confident that by doing so, he would remain the Chief Minister of Bihar, if not the Prime Minister, as the RJD was already working to oust him from the post and install Tejashwi Yadav as Chief Minister.
But this time, even joining the NDA failed to secure Nitish Kumar’s Chief Ministership, and it appears that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has scripted Nitish Kumar’s vacating the Bihar Chief Ministership by sending him to the Rajya Sabha.
After Nitish Kumar’s win for the Rajya Sabha seat, the NDA will retain its Chief ministership, although the next Chief Minister will be from the BJP, not the JDU. Despite the apparent possibility of this change, there is a fierce competition within the NDA camp in Bihar between the BJP and the JDU. The duo of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, the masterminds of BJP politics, are trying to reduce the political hold of JDU in Bihar in the coming days by electing their future Chief Minister, while Nitish Kumar, despite going to Rajya Sabha, is trying to not give BJP an opportunity to increase its political stature in Bihar.
Giving a boost to his efforts, Bihar Chief Minister and JDU National President Nitish Kumar, despite being elected to the Rajya Sabha, is going from place to place during the Samruddhi Yatra and telling the people that even though he is forced to leave the post of Chief Minister of Bihar, but if the public support remains with him, then despite BJP becoming the Chief Minister in Bihar politics, he will maintain his political hold in Bihar and will continue to do public welfare works for the people of Bihar. During this, he is also continuously keeping Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Chaudhary from the BJP camp with him and is getting him to praise him too. He is calling him the sister-in-law Chief Minister of Bihar. And if the BJP doesn’t do so and replaces Samrat Chaudhary with someone else as Bihar’s Chief Minister, it’s quite possible that Nitish Kumar, even though he’s no longer the Chief Minister of Bihar, will continue to organize similar yatras under the JDU, fueling public distrust of the BJP. Then, at an opportune moment, when he feels the situation has reached a point where he can defeat the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he may once again openly oppose them. In such a situation, the game of checkmate currently being played between the BJP and the JDU in Bihar by Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar, only time will tell who will win and who will lose.