Manoj
Chaurasia in Patna
What
prompted Chief Minister Nitish Kumar yesterday to announce his plan to hold a
rally in New Delhi in March next year? Whom does he want to impress? Is he nursing
his ambition to play a key role in the formation of the government at the
Centre in the next election?
These questions are being asked here at a time when it sounded
fairly “logical” when Mr Kumar decided to hold a rally in support of his
party’s demand for special-category status for Bihar.
The people are wondering why Mr Kumar needs a rally in New Delhi,
why he wants to keep himself busy with rally-and-yatra politics, and who he is
trying to impress ~ the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre or Gujarat
Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who he perceives as his biggest rival in the
saffron party.
The BJP, Mr Kumar's junior coalition partner in the NDA government
in Bihar, is planning a similar rally in Patna in April, a month after the JD-U
expects to hold two mega rallies over the issue without its partners.
Why is Mr Kumar keeping this distance from the partner that has
helped him run his government in Bihar, and which gave him a sort of “political
asylum” as a Union minister in the former NDA government when he, as a leader
of the defunct Samata Party, after revolting against his mentor RJD chief Lalu
Prasad, was battling for survival in his home state?
Observers say the answer lies in Mr Kumar’s fast-growing political
ambition to keep himself in the national reckoning, since the UPA and the NDA
are mired in corruption controversies and facing severe credibility crises.
They say Mr Kumar is well aware of the fact that any decision on
granting special-category status to a state is made by the National Development
Council and not by the Prime Minister. Thus, his demand has great political
meaning.
A rally in New Delhi, observers say, will convey to Bihar
residents that Mr Kumar is serious about Bihar's development, and win him
friends in industry, as special-category status will provide tax holidays to
willing entrepreneurs. It will also put him in the national reckoning, with not
much time left for the 2014 general elections.
Mr Kumar has held two similar rallies so far ~ one in New Delhi and
a second in Mumbai, the national business capital ~ against the backdrop of
Bihar's centenary celebrations this year. Some also say Mr Kumar is trying to
hide his “failures” by keeping himself busy in rallies and yatras he says are
in the interests of his state.
If his string of yatras and rallies is not enough, Mr Kumar is
also planning a week-long tour of Pakistan, which is said to be a move to reach
out to Muslims, whose support in his home state will be crucial in the next
general election, and to refurbish his image among the minority class.
The chief minister made his political intentions clear when he
appealed to the people at yesterday's rally to give his party a “huge mandate”
in the next general election, to enable him to help form a “friendly”
government at the Centre to fast-track development work in his backward state.
And, by keeping his partner at a distance, he has tried to signal that he holds
the “secular” tag despite being in the company of the “communal” BJP.
Mr Kumar has also exhorted all landlocked backward states to
demand special-category status. Observers say this is primarily aimed at
exerting more pressures on the Centre, rather than forming a “group of
like-minded states”.
In most of the landlocked states ~ Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh,
Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh ~ either the BJP or the Samajwadi Party is in
power. Thus, it is unlikely they will support Mr Kumar’s move, as they feel he
has grown too big for his boots in recent years.
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