Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and JD(U) president Sharad Yadav announced in Patna on Sunday that their party was withdrawing from the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance with which it was integrated since 1996. This marks the end of a landmark phase in India’s political life, and leaves the BJP bereft of the only “secular” ally that soldiered on with it after 2004.
India’s non-Marxian socialists — typically the Lohia stream from which the JD(U) has mutated — have come together before to join hands with the RSS-engendered BJP and its earlier avatar, the Jan Sangh, on a purely anti-Congress platform. But this time round even that factor — with Lok Sabha polls upon us —  could not save the 17-year old alliance of which the JD(U) was the largest component after the BJP.
In a not-so-subtle reference to the RSS, the Hindutva mother organisation, Kumar and Yadav were candid that the NDA alliance came under strain in Bihar whenever efforts were made to influence it “externally”. This, they said, was the case now with the BJP projecting Gujarat’s leader, Narendra Modi, as its campaign chief for the next LS election. Politically, “although not technically”, this was equal to overshadowing the national agenda on whose basis the JD(U) had sided with the BJP when the party was led by Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani.
Yadav also cited a statement of  Modi’s acolyte Amit Shah, now a BJP general secretary, as announcing in Lucknow that the Ram Mandir was very much on the party’s agenda.
These developments within the BJP, to which JD(U) leaders responded decisively, marks a breathtaking contrast with a much-quoted observation of the iconic leader Jayaprakash Narayan, who once said that if the RSS was “fascist”, the charge sometimes flung at that outfit, so was he. JP’s close identification with and praise of the RSS had resulted from the latter providing infrastructural support to his Emergency period anti-Congress politics. But clearly, the JD (U), which reveres JP, could not stomach the RSS’ meddling in the BJP’s affairs, and influencing the NDA as well.
Kumar has forwarded to Bihar governor D.Y. Patil the names of BJP ministers in his government for axing, and proposes to seek a fresh vote of confidence on June 19. He has taken a gamble, for his party is somewhat short of the majority mark. The JD(U) will also have to watch out for poaching of its MLAs by other parties, including the BJP. But we have reached the end of a fatiguing era in oppositional politics in the country so close to national elections. Significant realignments could be on the cards.
 

Caste equations will change
Manish Anand/DC 
The JD(U)’s parting of ways with the BJP now appears setting up Bihar for a triangular contest, which may change the social engineering of the principle players in the coming days.While Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar appears to have taken cue from his Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik by leading the state in an alliance government in similar fashion, his party is confident that he could spread his support base across the state by exploiting his “name, work and image”.
The BJP smarting under “betrayal” has signalled playing the OBC card by stressing saffron hawk Narendra Modi’s social background.
At the outset, Kumar’s grand social engineering of upper caste, extremely backward caste and mahadalit is set for serious permutations and combinations with the JD(U)’s principle focus now being the Muslim support base by playing their saviour card for being the key opponent of the rise of Modi at the national level.
Kumar’s secular turn after seven years of leading the NDA alliance in the state will now also be pitted against RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav’s core Muslim constituency, said a senior RJD leader.
Though Kumar had limited success to making inroads in the Yadav votebank of the RJD, the Muslims had seen him till last elections suspiciously for riding on the back of the BJP.
But the most daunting challenge for Kumar is likely to come from the upper caste vote base, which was on the forefront to throw the long Lalu Yadav-led RJD reign in the state.