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Nitish Kumar and Mamata Banerjee are in two different political boats, yet they would often appreciate each other. The Bihar chief minister had never criticized latter’s Railway Budget––in fact applauded her move to come out with White Paper on her predecessor Lalu Yadav’s tenure as Railway Minister. |
Now he has taken the decision to brighten up Patna with blue bulbs on the occasion of Bihar Diwas on March 22. Some government buildings and parks too would be painted in that colour. Perhaps it has something to do with Bengal chief minister’s recent decision to paint government buildings, flyovers, bridges, dividers etc of Kolkata with the sky blue colour.
It is other thing that those engaged in the sales of white bulbs, tubelights, fluorescent lamps etc in Patna are ruing their lot as their market is likely to be hit.
But the similarity between the two leaders has more to do with the colour of their politics. Both the Bihar and Bengal chief ministers have become expert in embarrassing the respective national parties on whose support they are surviving.
Janata Dal (United) has become for Bharatiya Janata Party what Trinamool Congress is for Congress. And when both these regional satraps are in crisis they look towards the same national parties to whom they owe their present position.
Nitish did not mind flagging off Lal Krishna Advani’s Jan Chetna Yatra on October 11 last, but weeks later turned his back towards the BJP. He broke his party’s alliance in Uttar Pradesh and now the Janata Dal (United) has called off its ties with the saffron party for Delhi Municipal Corporation poll, which is scheduled on April 15.
But when Mamata, who came to power in alliance with the Congress, was busy in arm-twisting the Manmohan Singh government and asking her own nominee Dinesh Trivedi to quit Railway Ministry, Nitish was busy seeking more than his pound of flesh from the BJP in Bihar.
The national party was brutally cut to size on the issue of Rajya Sabha election. The Janata Dal (United) managed to field four candidates leaving only two for the BJP. What is strange is that the Janata Dal (United) had no big name to accommodate, and there was no urgency for that seat too, whereas the BJP had several. Apart from party spokesman, Ravi Shankar Prasad, and the Bihar incharge of the party, Dharmendra Pradhan, leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, industrialist S S Ahluwalia, the owner of security firm, SIS, R K Sinha and former state party chief Gopal Narayan Singh were vying for those seats. But the Janata Dal (United) chose to nominate the state party president, Vashisth Narayan Singh, for the fourth seat and rejected BJP’s claim on it.
Here it is interesting to note that Vashisth Narayan Singh, till a couple of years back, was so much disillusioned with the Janata Dal (United) that he was looking for the RJD ticket before the Oct-Nov 2010 Bihar Assembly election. He became the state president of the party only after Vijay Chaudhary became minister after Nov 2010 election.
Though the BJP state leadership––this included Nitish loyalist deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi––made all out efforts to convince the chief minister yet he showed no flexibility. He met Arun Jaitley twice in Delhi on Sunday, a day before, the last day of filing of nomination papers.
But Nitish did not stop at that. On that very day in Delhi he organized a Bihar Diwas function. He addressed Biharis in Delhi, but totally ignored the BJP. The rank and file of the Hindutva party was aghast at such an overbearing attitude of the Janata Dal (United). Some BJP leaders were furious when the chief minister did not invite them even on the occasion of Holi.
In the same way there is no dearth of people who applauds Mamata for her historic victory in Bengal. But those who have an idea of the state politics can not deny the role of Congress in ensuring the big victory. While Mamata may be strong in south Bengal the family of Pranab Mukherjee, Abdul Ghani Khan Chaudhary and Priya Ranjan Das Munshi have a strong clout in northern part of the state, where Congress did very well in 2009 Parliament election and this time too. Mind it Left still has 41 per cent vote in Bengal––two per cent more than Nitish’s 39.1 per cent in Bihar––and Mamata could never have become the chief minister of Bengal without Congress. She has seen this in the past.
True Nitish too has emerged strong yet he can not deny the role BJP had played in converting him from the leader of half a dozen MLAs in 1995 to 118 MLAs of Janata Dal (United) now.
Sometimes both Nitish and Mamata behave in such a way as if they would swap their political allegiances––Nitish may cross over to join hands with the Congress and Mamata with the BJP-led NDA.
But then one can not fool all the people all the time.
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