Nitish Kumar is back as Bihar CM – yet again -Governance Now

Nitish Kumar is back as Bihar CM – yet again

BJP’s Sushil Modi is deputy chief minister

GN Bureau | July 27, 2017

#Nitish Kumar #Sushil Modi #BJP #JDU #Bihar politics

(Photo courtesy: Twitter/@SushilModi)

JD (U) leader Nitish Kumar was sworn-in as the chief minister of Bihar for the sixth time on Thursday after again striking an alliance with the BJP, barely hours after tendering his resignation as he parted ways with the RJD. And all this happened in less than 24 hours.

BJP’s Sushil Modi became the deputy chief minister.

With this, the JD(U)-BJP return to power after four years in the state. Nitish Kumar led JD(U) had walked out of the NDA in July 2013 after Narendra Modi was nominated as head of the BJP's campaign committee for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

A livid Lalu Prasad said on Thursday: “There had been a setting with the BJP.” He added that the prime minister’s congratulatory tweet had proved his point. Modi’s tweet had been discussed threadbare on the social media on Wednesday night as it was perhaps for the first time that a prime minister was congratulating a leader from another party for stepping down as the chief minister.

A stunned Congress saw power slip through its fingers.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told reporters: “Politics keliye unhi logon se gala lagaya, yehi tho problem hai Indian politics mein. In politics you come to know about what a person is thinking…I have known this for three-four months…”

The JD(U), RJD and the Congress had come together in 2015 to form the mahagathbandhan, which now lay in tatters. RJD had won the maximum 80 seats, with the JD(U) a close second with 71 seats. The BJP and its allies bagged 58 seats.

For the past few weeks, political trouble had been brewing in Patna following a case being registered against Lalu Prasad, his wife Rabri Devi and now former deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav on allegations of corruption during his tenure as railway minister in 2006. The investigation agency had conducted raids at more than 12 locations, including their houses in Delhi, Gurugram, Patna, Ranchi and Puri.

The JD(U) had been demanding that Tejashwi Yadav must resign. The demand was, however, categorically rejected by Lalu and Tejashwi.

Nitish Kumar has been in and out of power in Bihar, with his first stint in March 2000 lasting just a week.

An alliance with the BJP brought him back to power five years later. But, the problem lay in the fact that though he wanted its support, he didn’t want BJP’s Hindutva politics.

The 17-year-old alliance came to an abrupt halt after the BJP chose then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as its face for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The break-up proved to be a political hara-kiri, with the JD(U) getting only two seats out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

Nitish quit and picked Jitan Ram Manjhi as his replacement. Things did not work out and Manjhi was expelled from the party.

Nitish Kumar has also played his innings at the centre. He was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1989 and went on to win five parliamentary elections from Bihar. He has twice been the union railway minister.

Comments

Other News

BhashaDaan: Preserving classical and endangered languages with help of AI

The ministry of minority affairs (MoMA) on Tuesday conducted an insightful workshop on `BhashaDaan`, a citizen-driven initiative under BHASHINI, India’s National Language Technology Mission, aimed at preserving India’s rich and diverse linguistic heritage through digital means. T

BMC elections on January 15; results next day

The Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC) on Monday announced the schedule for elections to 29 municipal corporations across the state, including the high-stakes Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). Polling will be held in a single phase on January 15, 2026, with counting of votes and results sc

PM Modi leaves for a three-nation tour

Prime minister Narendra Modi on Monday left for a three-day visit of Jordan, Ethiopia and Oman, aiming to enhance age-old civilizational ties as well as extensive contemporary bilateral relations with these nations. In his departure statement ahead of his visit, Modi noted, "Today, I am

When insurance fails our migrant workers

Two weeks ago, 28 year old Senthil Kumar (name changed) from Tiruppur died of a heart attack in a labour camp near Dammam, Saudi Arabia. His body came home to Chennai because his employer agreed to pay for the airfare. His family received ₹10 lakh under the Pravasi Bharatiya Bima Yojana (PBBY). The distr

Fifty years later, what we need to learn from the Emergency?

50 Years of the Indian Emergency: Lessons for Democracy Edited by Peter Ronald deSouza and Harsh Sethi Orient BlackSwan, 376 pages, Rs 1,025

Diwali now part of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list

Deepavali, the festival of lights, has been inscribed on UNESCO’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This was announced at the 20th UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee session at Red Fort, New Delhi, held from December 8-13, 2025. It is the 16th Indian element on thi