Am I responsible for Nitish leaving I.N.D.I.A. bloc? Rahul asks front meeting

At the recently held meeting of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc in Delhi, both Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav wanted the alliance to examine why various political parties have left the grouping of opposition parties, including former Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who had conceived the idea of such an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance. According to them, such an exercise would help recalibrate priorities and reshape the way the alliance conducts its affairs.

According to people familiar with the matter, as discussions shifted to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which has 22 members in the Lok Sabha and felt betrayed by the Congress and has therefore snapped ties with the front, the SP leader cautioned that, to arrest such exits, the constituents must dig deep and figure out why all this is happening. When his turn came, Tejashwi Yadav also said that such a review of the functioning of the front was the need of the hour to prevent further damage.

At one point during the meeting, held at Delhi’s Constitution Club of India on June 8, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi apparently asked whether he was responsible for Nitish Kumar leaving the alliance.

While it was not a query raised for a response, it lingered in the air as an expression of doubt by the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

It was Kumar who came up with the idea of a new front as a counterweight to the BJP-led coalition and chaired its first meeting in Patna in June 2023, with 16 parties in attendance. This was followed by a meeting in Bengaluru in July and a third one in Mumbai, hosted by Uddhav Thackeray a month later. At its fifth meeting, held in Delhi in December, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge was declared the alliance chairperson, while Kumar was offered the post of national convenor of the alliance, an offer he declined. Soon after, in a realignment of forces, Kumar joined the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in early 2024 ahead of the crucial general election.

Kumar has long displayed an opportunistic streak, coupled with a die-hard propensity to shift allegiances to survive the rough and tumble of Indian politics. Then again, intra-coalition frictions between the RJD and JD(U) were also among the reasons for his exit, including social media attacks on him by Rohini Acharya, daughter of RJD president Lalu Prasad. Prasad and Kumar had forged a formidable mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) to neutralise Narendra Modi’s winning magic ahead of Bihar’s Assembly polls held in late 2015.

Kumar is often derided by critics as an opportunist or ‘Paltu Ram’ (turncoat). He broke with NDA in 2013 over Narendra Modi’s elevation as the coalition’s prime ministerial candidate. Then, after fighting the 2015 polls alongside RJD, he returned to the NDA in 2017, snapped ties with the BJP again in 2022 to reunite with RJD, and rejoined NDA in 2024.

While many have criticised Kumar’s disregard for electoral mandates in the pursuit of political survival, some I.N.D.I.A. bloc leaders are now reflecting that he would have been a major asset to the alliance in the 2024 elections, at least from the standpoint of electoral arithmetic.