Patna: The BJP looks set for more ally trouble.
As the party battles the Shiv Sena to form the government in Maharashtra, its second biggest ally in the Lok Sabha, the Janata Dal (United), which has 16 MPs, is mounting renewed pressure, demanding “proportionate representation” in the Narendra Modi Cabinet.
On Wednesday, at the JD(U)’s national executive meet in Delhi to announce Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as its national president, the party passed a resolution declaring that it was open to joining the union cabinet if “offered proportionate representation”.
“It would bring in homogeneity in the ministry and also would be good for the development of Bihar,” JD(U) national spokesperson K.C. Tyagi told ThePrint. Tyagi, along with former MP Pawan Verma, had moved the resolution.
Tyagi further said that the JD(U) had been “generous” with the BJP in that it has not only provided adequate representation in the Nitish ministry but also handed the post of Bihar deputy CM to the BJP.
Of the 33 ministers in the Nitish Cabinet, including the chief minister, 12 are from the BJP. The JD(U) is the senior partner in Bihar with 70 seats in the 243-member state assembly. The BJP has 55 seats.
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Friction over Union Cabinet
The JD(U) had stayed away from the Narendra Modi government after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as the BJP offered it only one Cabinet berth. Nitish had turned down the offer, calling it “mere symbolic representation”. His plea for more berths was turned down.
An angry Nitish then flew back to Patna to declare that while the JD(U) remained a part of the NDA, it would not join the Union ministry. He went ahead with expanding his own ministry without asking the BJP, maintaining that he was just filling up the JD(U)’s quota.
Now, the timing of the JD(U)’s renewed demand is bound to raise questions. It comes at a time when the ties between the BJP and the Shiv Sena have reached a flash point in Maharashtra.
JD(U) insiders admitted as much. “We felt that it was the appropriate time to renew our demands and give the message to the BJP that it cannot take its allies for granted,” a JD(U) minister told ThePrint.
“The spectacular victory of the NDA in Bihar during the Lok Sabha polls was not all about Narendra Modi. It also had the votes of Nitish Kumar.”
A rocky relationship
There are parallels to Maharashtra as well, with the JD(U) time and again behaving like the opposition — a charge that the Shiv Sena routinely draws.
The JD(U) has opposed bills such as the ones on Triple Talaq and Article 370 in Parliament.
It is also miffed with the state BJP unit, which has become more assertive ever since it outperformed the JD(U) in the Lok Sabha elections. For long the junior partner, the BJP bagged 17 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar. The JD(U) ended up with 16.
Since then, tension has brewed at regular intervals. BJP leader Sanjay Paswan angered the JD(U) last month, after urging Nitish to move to the central government to leave Bihar to the BJP and the JD(U) second rung ahead of the 2020 assembly polls.
The Patna flooding recently saw BJP leaders questioning Nitish’s governance, with Union Minister Giriraj Singh holding Nitish and Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi, who is from his own party, responsible for the water-logging in Patna.
Singh, a known critic of the chief minister, was at it again when on 28 October he questioned the law and order situation in Begusarai, his constituency.
Such has been the acrimony that deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi came under attack from his own partymen for defending Nitish.
For the JD(U), which has reacted with anger to the provocations, respite has come from an unexpected source — BJP president and Home Minister Amit Shah.
In an interview to News18 on 17 October, Shah dubbed the alliance with the JD(U) as being “atal (unbreakable)”. “The Janata Dal (United) and the BJP will go to the polls together, and we will fight the polls under the leadership of Nitishji. This is absolutely clear,” Shah had said.
JD(U) leaders, however, told ThePrint that they are not sure how long the truce will last.
“That (Shah’s remarks) is no assurance on what will happen after the elections and if Nitish will remain the chief minister,” the JD(U) minister quoted above said. “This is the right time for us to put pressure on the BJP leadership and make it known that we will be hard bargainers in the distribution of assembly seats.”
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