Can Nitish Kumar make another somersault after May 23, is the question in Bihar

Was it a googly or a ‘no ball’? JD(U) legislator and former Rajya Sabha Member Ghulam Rasool Balyawi set the cat among the pigeons by saying, “Since NDA is not going to get a majority at the Centre, the name of Nitish Kumar should be projected for Prime Minister.”

He, however, hastened to add that the NDA would be winning all the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar under the ‘leadership of Nitish Kumar’.

No senior leader of the Janata Dal United has reacted to Balyawi’s statement, which was made way back on May 9. Only the state party chief Vashistha Narayan Singh stepped in to claim that this was the personal opinion of Balyawi. He also claimed that Nitish Kumar had always backed Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In 2009 Nitish raised the demand of special category status for Bihar just a couple of days ahead of the counting of votes. In 2019 after the fifth phase of polling, one of his lieutenants came up with the demand that he be made the Prime Ministerial candidate.

BJP leaders are seething with anger as Balyawi has in the middle of the campaign came out with a statement that the NDA was not going to come to power this time. They are blaming Nitish for it. As this idea has been floated ahead of the results the reaction is quite natural.

Ground reports do not seem encouraging for the NDA. And if the NDA does not do well, Nitish Kumar may lose much of his bargaining position. If Janata Dal United wins fewer seats than the BJP it would get even more problematic for the Bihar CM. Both the allies are contesting 17 seats each this time and it is imperative for JD(U), which had won just two seats in the Modi wave in 2014, to not just dramatically improve its tally but also to win more seats than the BJP.

If NDA fails to come to power at the Centre and Janata Dal United manages to get even one Lok Sabha seat less than the BJP, it would be a personal setback for Nitish Kumar.

Sources within Janata Dal United concede that there is every prospect of a hung Parliament. In which case, they argue, the importance of Nitish would increase, provided his party gets more seats than the saffron outfit.

There appears to be method in Balyawi’s madness––as many NDA leaders want to prove––his utterances cannot be wished away. Nitish always get the pitch prepared for changing sides with the help of such players. Before he switched over to the BJP camp––from Grand Alliance in July 2017 he used a couple of big-mouthed spokesmen to attack Lalu Prasad and his family members, especially Tejashwi Yadav.

Nitish is fully aware of the way Telangana chief minister K Chandraskhar Rao is playing his cards. But what he fails to realise is that over the last few years he has earned the sobriquet of Paltu Kumar, that is one who frequently switches sides. There is every possibility that like in 2009 this time again nobody would look towards him for help and Nitish may be left high and dry.