Miffed over his dashed dream to emerge as the successor to Nitish Kumar in Bihar and increasingly sidelined in the party ever since the Chief Minister dumped the Bharatiya Janata Party to realign with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, rebel Janata Dal (United) leader and former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha is likely to announce his decision to quit the party on Monday.
The estranged leader, currently the chairperson of the JD(U) parliamentary board and also a party MLC, is also expected to announce his new political outfit today.
Kushwaha, a prominent OBC leader, is holding a convention of his supporters on February 19-20 in the capital Patna. While Kushwaha’s exit was a long time coming, all eyes are on whether he manages to whisk away leaders from the JD(U) as he embarks on a new political journey a year ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
The former minister has failed to find his feet in the party ever since Nitish Kumar allied with the RJD and subsequently announced that the alliance will contest the 2025 Bihar elections under the leadership of RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav. Since August last year, Kushwaha has left no opportunity to target the ruling Mahagathbandhan government, even issuing an open letter to JD(U) workers, appealing to them to join him in the two-day convention which got underway on Sunday.
Kumar’s decision to ally with the RJD, and anoint Tejashwi as the future leader, has amounted to the “weakening” of the party. He has also alleged that the CM had struck a “special deal” with the RJD while forming the government in August last year.
Kushwaha has also alleged that the JD(U) has failed to give the Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) their due representation and said that he might quit as a JD(U) MLC soon. Having merged his Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) with the JD(U) in 2021, Kushwaha is now staring at his third exit from the JD(U) since 2009.
Seen as a close ally to the BJP, Kushwaha is hoping to chart his own course ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in a bid to damage the prospects of the Mahagathbandhan in polls. There are indications that he could ally with the BJP closer to the 2025 Assembly elections in Bihar.
The more pertinent factor to watch for, however, will be the extent to which Kushwaha can damage the JD(U)-RJD alliance. This is exactly what the BJP will be looking at before it bets big on Kushwaha.
While the RLSP failed to win any seat in the 2020 Assembly polls, it is believed to have played a key role in the JD(U)’s defeat on 15-odd seats. With the BJP having vowed “never to ally” with Nitish Kumar again, Kushwaha may be its best bet as it parallelly tries to build its own support base as Nitish continues to lose ground.