Congress gets a lifeline in Bihar Mahagathbandan, but RJD is sceptical

The prospect of getting a slice of the power pie in Bihar following last week’s political realignment has infused much euphoria within the Congress party. If backdoor negotiations in the renascent Mahagathbandhan (Great Alliance) are any indicator, the Congress, whose pathetic electoral performance in the November 2020 Bihar polls had prevented Tejashwi Yadav’s ascension as chief minister then, could get up to three ministerial berths in the Nitish Kumar cabinet.

Yet, despite the sudden uptick in its political fortunes, facilitated by a perennially somersaulting Nitish, the Grand Old Party would do well to exercise restraint in its celebrations. Instead, it must focus on proving its value to its senior partners in the alliance, the RJD and the JD(U), if it does not wish to be elbowed out of the formidable Mahagathbandhan ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

The ongoing discussions among the reunited alliance partners over the blueprint of Nitish’s new cabinet have already laid bare the scepticism that the RJD has over accommodating the Congress in the government.

Lobbying hard

Sources in the grand alliance told The Federal that the RJD was initially reluctant to even have a Congress representation in the new government. Lalu, the RJD patriarch with a palpable soft corner for the Congress owing to his high regard for interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi, was open to son Tejashwi’s suggestion of keeping the Grand Old Party out of the government. It was Nitish who lobbied hard for the Congress’s inclusion.

Nitish’s sudden love for the Congress, say sources, stems from two factors. Sonia played a key role in facilitating Nitish’s return as CM of the Mahagathbandhan 2.0 government. Sources in the JD(U) and the Congress confirmed that when Nitish reached out to Sonia days before he severing his party’s ties with the BJP, the RJD was open to his return to the grand alliance but wanted the new government to be headed by Tejashwi.

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Sonia, it is learnt, assured Nitish of the Congress’s “full support for forming a grand alliance government” and then prevailed upon Lalu to not press for the CM’s chair for Tejashwi. Nitish, say sources, was wary that any agreement under which he was not the CM would make it difficult for him to fend off predictable attempts by the BJP to engineer defections from the 45-member JD(U) legislative party in the same way that the Shiv Sena split in Maharashtra two months back.

The immediate challenge of government formation and saving his CM chair aside, Nitish also has another reason to humour the Congress. Since being sworn in as CM for a ninth time in 22 years, Nitish has repeatedly asserted that he doesn’t harbour ambitions of being projected as the prime ministerial face in the 2024 general elections.

Regional satraps

However, in the event that the presently listless Opposition actually succeeds in dislodging the BJP from power less than two years from now and the Congress party fails to pit itself as an obvious claimant for the PM’s chair, it is expected that regional satraps from Sharad Pawar and Mamata Banerjee to K Chandrasekhar Rao and even the ailing Mulayam Singh Yadav would push their own candidatures.

In such a scenario, Nitish, despite his proven credentials of being an unreliable ally, would want to be on the right side of the Congress leadership as it would likely command the largest flock of MPs among the Opposition and, thus, be the kingmaker even if it can’t have one from within its fold.

All this may be good for Nitish’s political interests but for the Congress, the reasons to cheer aren’t many. Hamstrung by its inability to take on the BJP electorally and still struggling to resolve its own leadership crisis, the Congress is no longer the fulcrum of the Opposition and most regional outfits – including allies past and present – have begun to see an alliance with it as an electoral liability. As such, being serenaded by Nitish in a state where it has long been a fringe political player may make the Congress feel relevant and come with the added reward of a share in government, but that’s about the extent of the party’s real gain.

Also read: Nitish’s socio-economic plank could decimate BJP’s Hindutva pitch

What should be worrying for the Congress, particularly in Bihar that sends 40 MPs to the Lok Sabha, is that Lalu, who not long ago was a trusted ally and among the most vociferous defenders of Sonia Gandhi, is no longer willing to give the party an electoral ride on the RJD’s palanquin.

“We agreed to have Congress representation in the government as we wanted to send out an unambiguous message of Opposition unity against the BJP and because Lalu ji and his entire family hold Sonia Gandhi in very high regard. Otherwise, the Congress does not add any strength to our electoral capital,” a senior RJD leader told The Federal.

Flawed decision?

An RJD MLA said, “in the 2020 assembly polls, we made the mistake of giving the Congress 70 seats to contest and it could win only 19…had we contested 50 percent of the seats given to the Congress or given some extra to our Left allies, Tejashwi could have become CM in 2020 itself.”

The MLA added that even if the Congress was kept out of the renewed Grand Alliance, “it would have had no effect on the stability of the new government because without the Congress too, the RJD-JD(U)-Left-HAM alliance would have a majority of 145 MLAs (against the half-way mark of 122 MLAs in the 243-member Bihar assembly).”

Equations between the RJD and the Congress have been deteriorating steadily since the 2020 Bihar poll setback. A senior RJD MP, however, insists that more than the poll loss, what has widened the gulf between the two “natural allies” is the “choice of people that the Congress high command has chosen to run the party’s affairs in Bihar and the failure of the Gandhis in standing by our leadership in time of crisis”.

Also read: RJD pins hopes on Left as Congress continues to lose support in Bihar

The MP added that the RJD-Congress alliance “had been dead since the 2020 assembly poll results” and that though the Congress was now part of the mahagathbandhan government, “its continuation in the coalition will depend on the Congress high command’s willingness to be realistic in the electoral demands it makes from our leaders because, quite frankly, the Congress is a burden that the RJD has been carrying for far too long… we do not gain even 100 votes because of our alliance with them.”

A close aide of Tejashwi told The Federal that the Lalu clan felt particularly slighted when “no member of the Gandhi family spoke against Lalu’s continuing persecution by the BJP in various cases”. The aide added Tejashwi too was “extremely annoyed” when, earlier this year, he travelled to London to address an event at which Rahul Gandhi was also a speaker.

“This happened in May, weeks before Rahul was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate in Delhi. While Tejashwiji was in London, the CBI filed a fresh corruption case against Laluji, some members of his family and staff alleging they had all accepted plots of land in exchange for jobs when Laluji was Union railways minister in the UPA-I government. The charges are all bogus and it is clear that this was being done to intimidate the RJD,” the aide said.

He added, “Can you imagine that neither Rahul nor any of the other Congress leaders present at the London event expressed any solidarity with Tejashwiji though they were all at the same venue when news of this case arrived; not one word of support… and then, some weeks later when Rahul was being questioned by the ED, the Congress wanted its allies to issue statements condemning the Centre for misusing central agencies… so, you can’t win an election on your own, you can’t speak up in support of your allies but you want your allies to keep carrying you and fighting for you; an alliance has to have some reciprocity but the Congress has nothing of value to give its allies.”

The RJD has also been unhappy at the way Bhakt Charan Das, the Congress’s Bihar desk in-charge, has been running the party’s affairs in the state. In October last year, when the RJD refused to offer the Congress one of the two assembly seats in the state that was up for a by-poll, Das had accused its ally of being in cahoots with the BJP.

Also read: Bihar puts spoke in the wheel as BJP juggernaut rolls from state to state

Incensed Lalu

An incensed Lalu had famously hit out at Das, calling him bhakchonhar (a widely used colloquial slang in Bihar meaning obtuse or dull-minded). Sources say the RJD leadership had refused to engage with the Congress as long as Das was handling the party’s affairs in Bihar. Das, on the other hand, had continued with his tirade against the RJD, threatening every now and then that the Congress was “prepared to contest polls in Bihar on its own”.

Earlier this week, when Tejashwi called on Sonia to discuss formation of the new government, Das was forced to swallow his ego and call on Lalu and apologise for past transgressions. After the meeting, a visibly sulking Das told reporters that the Congress will accept any representation in the Nitish cabinet – expected to be announced on August 16 – that is “respectable”.

The RJD, sources said, felt that two out of over two dozen ministerial berths, is the “maximum respect” that the Congress deserved – a number later revised upwards by one more berth on Nitish’s insistence. RJD sources say if the Congress doesn’t mend its ways and prove before the 2024 general elections that its electoral capability is on the mend, it may also be faced with a ‘take it or leave it’ offer of just three to four of Bihar’s 40 Lok Sabha seats in the seat-sharing among the grand alliance constituents. The ball is now in the Congress’s court.