New Delhi [India], October 16: Union Home Minister Amit Shah landed in Patna on Thursday and delivered a master class in political ambiguity. Asked point-blank whether Nitish Kumar would continue as Bihar’s chief minister if the NDA wins, Shah served up a non-answer wrapped in democratic rhetoric: “Who am I to make someone chief minister?”
Spoiler alert: he’s literally the guy who makes those calls.
Shah told Aaj Tak that the Bihar CM decision would rest with newly elected MLAs after the November 6 and 11 elections.
The timing couldn’t be sharper. Hours before Shah’s Patna appearance, Nitish launched the JDU’s campaign in Samastipur with a rally staged under a massive hoarding of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Subtle as a sledgehammer. The 73-year-old sought his next term by asking voters to remember his two-decade transformation of Bihar, from “jungle raj” (though he didn’t use that exact phrase) to functional governance.
“The condition earlier was so bad that people were afraid to step out after dark,” Nitish told the crowd, referencing his first stint starting November 24, 2005. He rattled off the usual checklist: schools, hospitals, roads, village electrification. Standard campaign fare, delivered with the enthusiasm of someone reading the phone book.
BJP’s Not-So-Hidden Agenda
Shah’s dodge confirms what everyone already suspected. The BJP wants its own man in the top job. They’ve never had a chief minister in Bihar, a state traditionally dominated by Mandal politics. That sticks in their craw.
Shah even threw in a backhanded compliment, recalling how the BJP graciously made Nitish CM after 2020 despite winning more seats. “Nitishji had called PM Narendra Modi and said Bihar should have a BJP chief minister,” Shah revealed, positioning the gesture as pure magnanimity. The subtext screamed: don’t expect us to be that generous twice.
For the JDU, Shah’s comments land like a gut punch. The party’s been telling voters and workers that the BJP agreed to another Nitish term. That narrative just got kneecapped on live television.
The seat-sharing numbers tell their own story. Both BJP and JDU are contesting 101 seats each in the 243-member assembly. Equal partners on paper. But the BJP’s fingerprints are all over the JDU’s candidate list this year.
Nitish fielded just four Muslim candidates, down from 10 in the previous election. The BJP? Zero Muslim candidates across all 101 seats. For a leader who built his brand on secularism and welfare schemes for minorities, that’s a sharp pivot. Bihar’s 16 percent Muslim electorate might notice.
The JDU’s new candidate mix leans heavily on traditional bases: 37 OBCs, 22 Extremely Backward Classes, 22 upper castes. Nitish is clearly betting his reduced political leverage means he can’t afford to chase Muslim votes against the PM Modi-Shah juggernaut.
Still, on the campaign trail, Nitish tried reconnecting with Muslim voters. “Earlier, there used to be many communal incidents, but since my government came to power, there has been peace and harmony,” he said. Words are cheap. Candidate lists speak louder.
Opposition’s Self-Inflicted Chaos
While the NDA sorted its house, the Mahagathbandhan opposition is eating itself. Mukesh Sahni’s Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) wants 40 seats. Tejashwi Yadav’s RJD capped them at 15. Sahni, who calls himself the “Son of Mallah,” is refusing to budge.
The VIP claims to represent Bihar’s fishing communities (Mallah, Nishad, Nonia, Bind, Beldar), roughly 2.61 percent of the state’s population per the 2023 caste census. They won four seats in 2020 contesting just 11. Then three MLAs defected to the BJP. One died. Now they have zero representation but want nearly 17 percent of the assembly.
Sahni’s also demanding the deputy CM post. When told people might not like that, he shot back: “If some people do not like Tejashwi Yadav to be the Chief Minister, will he not be?”
Bold. Delusional. Probably both.
The seat-sharing mess means “friendly fights” where opposition parties field candidates against each other. Congress versus CPI in Bachhwara. Congress versus RJD in Vaishali. CPI versus VIP in Janjharpur. Ground-level workers are confused and directionless, waiting for clarity that isn’t coming.
The RJD withdrew its candidate from Alamnagar at the last minute to accommodate VIP’s Brahmadev Sahni after initially issuing an election symbol to Navin Nishad. Workers are pissed. Voters are watching.
Supreme Court – ECI Clash Over Voter List
The Supreme Court weighed in Thursday on Bihar’s controversial special intensive revision (SIR) of voter rolls. Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi told the Election Commission they expect full transparency on deleted and added voters.
The ECI filed an affidavit rejecting claims of “disproportionate exclusion of Muslims,” calling the accusation “baseless and communal.” The poll body noted it doesn’t record voters’ religion, so bias allegations are unfounded.
NGO Association for Democratic Reforms alleged 25 percent of 65 lakh excluded voters were Muslim, and 34 percent of the final 3.66 lakh deleted names. ECI said these numbers rely on name-recognition software of questionable accuracy.
Here’s the kicker: zero appeals have been filed against the 3.66 lakh deleted voters. The court slammed political parties for not helping excluded voters appeal. “Political parties were never interested. We all know how political parties have behaved,” Justice Kant observed.
Most deleted names were people who didn’t submit enumeration forms, shifted permanently, or died, according to ECI. Political parties filed just 25 inclusion claims and 119 objections. Individual voters filed 36,475 inclusion and 2.17 lakh exclusion claims.
The ECI also convened enforcement agency heads to combat cash, drugs, liquor, and inducements during polling. Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar emphasized “zero-tolerance” for fair elections, directing agencies to map constituencies and borders to check smuggling routes.
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For Indian voters watching this election, there’s a lesson: coalition politics is transactional theatre. Today’s ally is tomorrow’s footnote. Nitish built his career on switching sides and cutting deals. Now he’s discovering the house always wins eventually.
The irony? Nitish’s best chance at another term might be the opposition’s incompetence. If the Mahagathbandhan keeps eating itself, the NDA wins by default. Then, the MLA Shah mentioned? They’ll do exactly what PM Modi and Shah tell them to do. Democracy in action, Bihar style.
