Nitish Kumar Starts Getting Ready For ‘National Role’, Eyes Lok Sabha Seats In Uttar Pradesh

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who will have to hand over the reins of power to his deputy Tejaswi Yadav by early next year, has started getting ready to play a role in national politics. 

Quite like Prime Minister Narendra Modi who chose to move out of Gujarat and contest from Varanasi in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Kumar is also eyeing the prestigious Phulpur Lok Sabha seat in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. 

Phulpur holds considerable emotional significance for ‘Lohiaites’ like Kumar because their socialist icon Ram Manohar Lohia contested against Jawaharlal Nehru from Phulpur in 1962. Nehru, however, trounced Lohia and his victory margin was more than the total votes polled by Lohia. 

Nehru won Phulpur, located in Prayagraj district (a Bharatiya Janata Party stronghold), thrice while his sister Vijalakshmi Pandit won the seat twice.

Former prime minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh also won Phulpur in 1971. Notorious gangster Atiq Ahmed, who was gunned down in April this year, also won Phulpur in 2004. 

Kumar, his close confidantes told Swarajya, feels that his credentials as a ‘national leader’ with a pan-India appeal will be buttressed if he contests and wins a Lok Sabha seat outside Bihar. 

The Bihar Chief Minister, who has been instrumental in bringing anti-BJP parties under the I.N.D.I.A umbrella, had been scouting for a constituency outside Bihar for the past few months. 

Top leaders of the Janata Dal (United)-JDU told Swarajya that seats in Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh were considered for Nitish Kumar to contest from. Informal discussions were held with the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and with the Samajwadi Party (SP). 

Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren was not too keen on supporting Kumar from any of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in his seat. 

The SP — the only major party in the anti-BJP front from Uttar Pradesh — was, on the other hand, willing to support Kumar from any seat in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Bihar’s Rural Development Minister Shravan Kumar and JD(U) national president Lalan Singh, along with some close aides of Kumar, held talks over the past couple of weeks with Samajwadi party chief Akhilesh Yadav. 

A top JD(U) leader who did not want to be named told Swarajya that apart from Phulpur, the party is also considering Pratapgarh, Fatehpur and Ambedkar Nagar Lok Sabha seats. Of these, only Fathepur is in south-central Uttar Pradesh while the rest are in eastern Uttar Pradesh. 

Akhilesh Yadav is learnt to have assured the JD(U) leadership that he will support Kumar from any of these four seats. 

Minister Shravan Kumar told Swarajya that he had toured Uttar Pradesh recently and interacted closely with JD(U) workers in that state.

“When I floated the idea of our chairperson Nitish Kumar contesting the next Lok Sabha elections from a seat in Uttar Pradesh, they were all very enthusiastic and vowed to work unitedly and spiritedly, and in close sync with Samajwadi Party workers, to ensure Nitishji’s win,” said Kumar. 

JD(U) chief spokesperson K C Tyagi said that eastern Uttar Pradesh has a large OBC population, including Kurmis (a caste that Nitish Kumar belongs to) and Yadavs who form a strong support base of the Samajwadi Party.

“Nitishji can easily win from any of the four Lok Sabha seats that have been shortlisted,” he added. 

But that may not be the case. Phulpur, for one, could prove to be a tough bet for Nitish Kumar. Four of the five Assembly seats in Phulpur are held by the BJP and only one by the Samajwadi party. Also, all the four BJP MLAs won their seats by handsome margins. 

The BJP’s Keshari Devi Patel defeated SP’s Pandhari Yadav by more than 1.7 lakh votes in 2019. The BJP had won Phulpur in 2014 as well. Prayagraj is considered to be a BJP stronghold. 

Nitish Kumar’s prospects are brighter in Pratapgarh. The BJP holds just one of the five Assembly constituencies in this parliamentary seat and its ally — the Apna Dal — won another in 2022 Assembly polls.

Of the remaining three seats, two were won by the Samajwadi Party and one by the Congress. 

Ambedkar Nagar is perhaps the best bet for Nitish Kumar. The Samajwadi Party is very strong there and won all the five Assembly seats in that parliamentary constituency in 2022.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) also has a considerable support base there, and had won the Lok Sabha seat in 2019.

As for the Fatehpur Lok Sabha seat, it presents mixed prospects. The BJP won this seat in 2014 and 2019, but did not fare too well in the 2022 Assembly polls from this district. It won three of the six Assembly seats under the Fatehpur Lok Sabha constituency in 2022 with the Samajwadi Party winning two and the Apna Dal one. 

Why Nitish Kumar Is Eyeing A Seat Outside Bihar

Nitish Kumar knows that he will have to make way for Tejaswi Yadav in Bihar by the end of this year or early next year.

That was the condition laid down by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) for taking the JD(U) back into the mahagathbandhan after the latter snapped ties with the BJP in August last year. 

RJD sources told Swarajya that their leadership made it very clear to Nitish Kumar that he would continue as chief minister till the end of 2023 or, at most, till very early 2024 and would have to hand over power to Tejaswi Yadav after that. 

In return, the RJD would support Nitish Kumar’s bid to play a major role on the national political arena. 

Thus, Nitish Kumar knows that his days in Bihar’s politics are limited and if he has to stay in politics, he will have to step into the national arena. 

Nitish Kumar also realises that he has powerful rivals like Mamata Banerjee who harbour similar ambitions of playing a major role in national politics. 

“Nitish Kumar has to prove that his credentials as a ‘national’ leader are stronger than that of his rivals. One way of doing so is to contest and win from another state, just as Narendra Modi had done in 2014,” said political scientist Yogendra Kumar who teaches at Patna University.

Mamata Banerjee cannot hope to contest and win any Lok Sabha seat outside Bengal because her appeal is limited to the geographical confines of her own state.

But Nitish Kumar feels that a favourable caste configuration in some seats of Uttar Pradesh, a Hindi-speaking state like Bihar, will work in his favour if he contests from any such seat in the neighbouring state. 

If Kumar chooses to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, as he surely will, he will be entering the electoral fray after 20 long years. The last time he contested and won a direct election was in 2004 when he won the Nalanda Lok Sabha seat. 

After becoming the chief minister of Bihar in 2005, he did not contest any direct election and chose to remain a member of the Bihar Legislative Council, the upper house in the bicameral legislature in Bihar. 

Nitish Kumar’s current term as MLC ends in May next year. That will also mark the end of his long tenure in state politics.

After having remained chief minister for so many years, it is only natural for him to take the plunge into national politics. More so since the chief minister’s chair won’t be his very soon.