Bihar realignment triggers buzz on Nitish’s bigger goal
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s turnaround may catapult him into becoming the face of opposition in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. As congratulations poured in from across the country for Nitish Kumar after he was sworn in for the record eighth time as the chief minister, opposition leaders did not fail to mention how the Bihar realignment would unite the opposition, and how a united opposition would now take on the BJP in its Hindi heartland bastion.
Nitish himself said those who won in 2014 should now worry about 2024. Analysts claim he has a much larger acceptability among opposition parties than, say, Mamata Banerjee or K Chandrashekar Rao, who have taken the lead to unite the opposition parties. Mamata has fought bitterly against the Congress and Left, which would play key roles in deciding the opposition face. Her recent attempt to create a non-Congress front did not go down well with opposition parties such as the Nationalist Congress Party, Shiv Sena and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, which are allied to the Congress. As for K Chandrashekar Rao, his acceptability beyond Telangana is yet to be tested. Nitish, on the other hand, already has the Congress and Left as allies in his new government.
His appeal stretches across the Hindi belt comprising Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Bihar and Jharkhand. Some of these states, such as UP, MP, Chhattisgarh and Bihar, have a sizable population of Kurmis, a caste to which Nitish Kumar belongs. The BJP had swept these states in 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Kurmis are OBC and vote largely in favour of the BJP, except in Bihar where Nitish controls this chunk, and Chhattisgarh where the vote of this caste goes to Congress as chief minister Bhupesh Baghel is a Kurmi. Nitish’s projection as the opposition’s prime ministerial candidate will not only make a dent in the BJP’s Kurmi vote bank but also has the potential to unite all the opposition parties.