Congress gets a major boost in Bihar

Patna: The comfortable victory for Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar during Wednesday’s confidence vote in the state assembly points towards a fairly new political alignment, with the Congress party deciding to come to the rescue of the beleaguered Janata Dal (United), which was left in the minority after it parted ways with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

The development indicates that Kumar’s JD-U is headed for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, which seems to have fallen on hard times after losing two key allies in the TMC and DMK while differences have cropped up with two other allies, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

For the past decade and more, Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) had been the natural ally of the Congress, and both the parties fought several Lok Sabha and state assembly elections together conscious about the need to avert a division in secular votes. Their tie-up paid rich dividends in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections when the RJD-Congress alliance bagged 26 out of total 40 LS seats in Bihar (The RJD-Congress-Lok Janshakti Party alliance together won a total of 29 seats out of 40).

Both the Congress and the RJD subsequently lost badly after serious differences cropped up over the seat-sharing arrangements during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls and both opted to contest the elections independently. While the RJD won only four seats, the Congress ended winning just one seat out of 40. The break-up in their alliance also proved disastrous during the last 2010 assembly polls as the RJD bagged only 22 seats against four won by the Congress in the 243-member Bihar assembly. The NDA, on the other hand, won a total of 206 seats and returned with a three-fourth majority. No other party or alliance has received such a huge mandate in Bihar since independence.

The Congress’ move to support the JD-U, however, is set to create a new political equation where the RJD will have no place. Kumar has been Lalu Prasad’s sworn rival since the time he engineered a split in the then JD-U government and formed the Samata Party which later merged with the JD-U in 2003. Given the situation, Lalu Prasad will be finding it tough to join any alliance of which the JD-U remains a component. So far, he had lent outside support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government at the federal level although his party, the RJD, did not fight elections alongside the Congress.

Lalu Prasad has at times challenged his rival to join hands with the Congress. Until recently, he had denied joining hands with the Congress saying his alliance with the BJP was intact. But, recent development offer enough evidence to suggest Kumar is reaching out to the Congress and this became more clear when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the Bihar chief minister “secular” on Monday and the latter wasted no time in thanking the PM.

With Kumar on its side, Congress has received a major boost ahead of next year’s general elections. The Congress had been looking for a strong regional ally which could make up the loss to be caused by a possible desertion by the Samajwadi Party and its search has ended with Kumar. The urgency of the situation is underlined by the fact that a decision to support Kumar was taken at the level of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. Initially, the Congress had planned to abstain from voting during the confidence vote called by Kumar.