State BJP leaders feel that the Muzaffarpur deaths have turned Nitish Kumar into a political liability.
New Delhi: All is not well between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal United (JDU) in Bihar with leaders in both the parties preparing for a possible break-up much before polls in October-November next year. Both the JDU and the BJP have started organising booth level workshops, asking their cadres to prepare themselves for all the constituencies and have launched simultaneous membership drives.
The pressure on the BJP to part way from Nitish Kumar is being exerted by state BJP leaders who believe that the state government’s alleged negligence, which led to the death of about 200 children in Muzaffarpur and other parts of the state due to brain fever made worse by malnutrition and lack of better health facilities, has turned Nitish Kumar into a political liability.
Earlier on Wednesday, speaking in the Rajya Sabha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called the deaths in Muzaffarpur “one of the biggest failures and a matter of shame”. This has come as a rude surprise for Nitish Kumar as he had chosen to keep quiet on the issue despite media persons in Patna, Muzaffarpur and New Delhi making desperate attempts to seek his version on the encephalitis outbreak.
The JDU leadership in the state is feeling demoralised after the Prime Minister’s statement on the encephalitis deaths—a statement which is being read by political observers and leaders across parties as an indictment of the state machinery. This statement coupled with Modi’s claim that he had sent the Union health minister to Bihar, has led to questions being raised on Nitish Kumar’s image of “Susashan Babu”.
As a damage control measure and a possible reaction of the PM’s speech, Nitish Kumar immediately ordered a high-level meeting led by the chief secretary on the issue for the first time since the outbreak of the brain fever disease which has claimed about 200 lives in different parts of the state.
JDU sources said that a press conference is on the cards where Nitish Kumar will give details about how it was not just the fault of the state government, but the callousness was also on the part of the Union health ministry which, among other things, failed to construct a specialised unit in Muzaffarpur despite the same government promising the same in 2014 when the same Union minister had visited Muzaffarpur for the same tragic occasion. At that time, the BJP was not a partner in the government in the state which was being run with the co-operation of the Congress and RJD and JDU’s Ramdhani Singh was the health minister.
Patna-based BJP sources said that the state leaders have already conveyed to the central leadership about the disappointment and anger of the common people with Nitish Kumar.
On the other hand, the JDU believes that the accountability for the negligence lies with the health minister and former Bihar BJP state president Mangal Pandey and that he should have resigned by now.
The BJP has, however, opposed this and has conveyed to the chief minister that Mangal Pandey, a “senior party leader”, who is also the in-charge of the BJP in Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand, cannot be made a scapegoat as he is new to the office.
Earlier this week, senior party leader and Bihar deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi, who is seen by many as the closest of Nitish Kumar’s friends in the state BJP, issued a formal press release that also included his tweets, in which he wrote that those “non-Congress parties who are not going to support the BJP’s stand on triple talaq will meet the fate of Congress” and that they should show courage like socialist icon Ram Manohar Lohia. Incidentally, Nitish Kumar has repeatedly sought Bharat Ratna award for Lohia. The message of Suhsil Modi to JDU was not lost. The JDU has, many times in the recent past, made it clear that it will not support the BJP on the “contentious” issues of uniform civil code (UCC), Article 370 and Article 35A.
Patna-based party sources in both the BJP and JDU accepted that their ties are on the very “edge” and said this bitterness had increased post 23 May.
The trouble started after Nitish Kumar was left embarrassed when he came to Delhi under the impression that the BJP will give JDU at least two berths in the new Modi 2.0 Cabinet, when in fact, the BJP just offered one, while making it clear that it was a take-it-or-leave-it offer. Nitish Kumar came back “empty handed” to Patna and announced that his party would never join the NDA government while adding that it was a “closed chapter” now.
A miffed Kumar retaliated soon by expanding his state Cabinet without giving a single post to the BJP. All the eight new ministers who were inducted were from the JDU.
However, it was allowing his party vice president and election strategist Prashant Kishor to work for BJP’s arch rival, Mamata Banerjee, and helping her to secure a win in the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections, that is proving to be the proverbial final straw that broke the camel’s back.
Despite being told that the BJP has not taken lightly of this development, Kumar made it a point that the media and the BJP sees that Kishor was very much close to him when the party’s national executive was held in Patna on 9 June just three days after news came out that Kishor, through his organization IPAC, has started to work for Mamata Banerjee after which his team shifted to Kolkata.
In between, Kumar removed party spokesman Ajay Alok from his post, following his anti-Mamta Banerjee comments on news channels with JDU leaders privately stating that he was speaking the language of the BJP. Till now, three senior BJP leaders, former Union health minister, Dr C.P. Thakur, Sachchidanand Rai and Tunnaji Pandey, both MLAs have directly attacked the chief minister for his failure to handle the situation in Muzaffarpur, with Rai and Pandey demanding the resignation of the chief minister. None of the BJP leaders have so far spoken against these three leaders for attacking Nitish Kumar.
Thakur, who is himself a physician, also wrote a letter to the Prime Minister requesting him to visit Muzaffarpur while mentioning the inability of the Chief Minister to respond with medical assistance in time and checking the situation from getting worse every day.
Nitish Kumar, on his part, has showed twice in recent times, once in 2013 when he snapped ties with the BJP and again in 2017 when he broke the alliance with the RJD, that he is a “practical” politician.
A senior Patna-based political observer said: “The BJP is giving enough reasons for Nitish Kumar to seek a fresh mandate. It first snubbed the CM during the swearing in; it is trying to push contentions issues like Article 370 down the JDU’s throat and now it is attacking the CM for the deaths that took place in Muzaffarpur. It is only a question of ‘when’ not ‘whether’ (about the alliance breaking up). The JDU believes that the BJP got 17 seats because of Nitish Kumar in the state. The BJP believes the JDU won on 16 seats because of Modi. Nitish Kumar’s past record has shown that he does not allow such provocations to go unheeded. Even a large section of the BJP wants that the party should now stand on its own feet in the state.”