Dancing With The Strangler

Nitish took a calculated risk, but an ambitious BJP would be a different animal in 2020

- Pratul Sharma

On the evening of July 26, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad was preparing to go to Ranchi to appear before the CBI court in the fodder scam case hearing, when he received a call from Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. “Main pranam karta hoon. Yeh mera antim pranam hai (Accept my greetings. These are my last),” said Nitish, whose party, the Janata Dal (United), was an alliance partner of the RJD. “It will not be possible to go further,” Nitish told a stunned Lalu.

Nitish was on his way to the Raj Bhawan to meet Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi to submit his resignation. “What will not go further? What are you talking about?” Lalu asked. But Nitish hung up on him. Within minutes, the alliance was over.

Apparently, Lalu had known that something was amiss. That was why he did not take an earlier flight to Ranchi. Both the RJD and the JD(U) had legislature party meetings ahead of the upcoming assembly session that day. Ironically, the alliance had been formally announced exactly three years ago, on July 27, 2014, when the RJD, the JDU and the Congress had come together to contest 10 assembly seats in the by elections.

Curiously, when Nitish submitted his resignation to governor, answering the “call of his conscience” on the issue of corruption (by Lalu and his family), the BJP’s parliamentary board, the highest decision-making body in the party, was meeting in Delhi. It promptly announced the BJP would back Nitish, and within minutes Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted in his support. Nitish thanked him in a reply tweet.