Karma bites back: JD(U) rebels back Sharad Yadav, take on Nitish

Patna: It was not long ago that JD(U)’s de facto boss Nitish Kumar dictated terms to party leaders. Anyone who dared to oppose him was either thrown out of the party or left to rot without a role. It did not matter how big his stature was. He was ruthless. Be it George Fernandes, Lalan Singh, Upendra Kushwaha, Sabir Ali or Shivanand Tiwari—all were dealt with the similar rough fashion by Nitish.

Fernandes was driven out of Nalanda—the home constituency of Nitish— and then denied a party ticket during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. He contested the polls as an Independent from Muzaffarpur seat and lost. His crime was that he had opposed the naming of Nitish as the chief minister candidate during the 2000 assembly polls. Singh, who is known as Nitish’s ’langotia yaar’ (bosom friend) in the political circles in the state, was expelled from the party for speaking against him in public. Now he is once again back in the JD (U) and has been made a minister in the government. Kushwaha, Ali and Tiwari are no longer in the party for the similar reason: voicing their opposition to Nitish’s ways.

However, the equations within the party appear to have undergone a sea change after its disastrous performance in the just-held general elections - the party’s tally came down to two seats from 20 in the 2009 polls. Now, it’s Nitish who is facing the music. Party leaders, even insignificant ones, and law-makers have become vocal about his style of functioning. Responding to pressure from within, he has been making big compromises and U-turns on strategy. He appears totally cornered and helpless in his own party.

As of now, Nitish faces a strong challenge from his one-time loyalist Sharad Yadav whom he crowned as the national party president after snatching the chair from Fernandes in 2006. The story doing the rounds in the political circles here is that Sharad has the strong backing of rebel JD (U) lawmakers who have fielded their own candidates for the three Rajya Sabha seats going to polls on 19 June.

The rebels have put up their own candidates against the party’s two official nominees - Pawan Kumar Varma and Ghulam Rasoon Baliabi - but spared Sharad, the party’s third official candidate, as he looks set to win unopposed. Sharad had lost his Madhepura seat to RJD’s Pappu Yadav in the recent polls and was in dire need for a berth in Rajya Sabha to stay relevant politically.

He had landed in Patna last Sunday to chalk out the party’s strategy for the RS polls and went on making distress calls to his ‘boss’ Nitish but got a cold response. “Sharad_ji_ was given appointments with Nitish only with the condition that first he suspends a rebel MLA, Ravindra Rai, who was more vocal against Nitish,” said Gyanendra Singh Gyanoo, who heads the rebel group. Eventually, he had to oblige for his own personal interest. Rai was a very close follower of Sharad and became a target soon after he opposed Nitish.

Now, it’s a full-grown battle between Nitish and Sharad in Bihar with the rebels lending their support to their party’s national chief against the former. “Nitish has insulted Sharad_ji_ so many times. We requested the latter to join our camp,” adds Gyanoo.

Sharad is said to be at loggerheads with Nitish ever since he unilaterally broke off his party’s long-standing alliance with the BJP over the issue of Narendra Modi and walked out of the NDA which cost the former the chair of NDA chairman. He was made to face another humiliation when Nitish refused to honour his wish to nominate him to RS but considered three other people for the RS nominations—Ramnath Thakur, son of former chief minister Karpoori Thakur, Kahkashan Perveen, former Bhagalpur mayor, and editor of a Hindi daily Harivansh Narayan Singh. Of them, Singh had nothing to do with the party except for turning his daily into a “mouthpiece” of the JD(U) whereas Perveen had joined the party only four years back in 2010.

The rebels opened a front against the party leadership soon after it allotted ministerial berths to outsiders and “betrayers” who had once rebelled against Nitish himself. The key inductees in the Jitan Ram Manjhi government during the recent cabinet expansion included Samrat Chaudhary, Ram Lakhan Ram Raman and Jawaid Iqbal Ansari, who won the last assembly polls on RJD tickets but joined the JD(U) just ahead of the polls. Other notable faces inducted in the Manjhi cabinet were Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh, who rebelled against the JD(U) leadership only to return to the party on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls, and Bima Bharati, wife of a dreaded gangster who fumbled many times while taking oath.

The move triggered a revolt in the party as party’s spokespersons Neeraj Kumar and Sanjay Singh resigned from their post, while many other party lawmakers quit from the House committees or executive bodies, forcing Nitish to hold one-to-one meeting with them, something the former chief minister had never done before.