GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 11th Feb. Monday, February 12, is the state assembly’s trust vote that Janata Dal United (JDU) leader Nitish Kumar will be requesting, just over two weeks after he was sworn in as the Chief Minister of the eastern state of Bihar for a record-breaking ninth time. JDU has sent out a three-line whip to all of its MLAs urging them to vote for the alliance and attend the trust vote.
Although he insisted that it was a “routine exercise that takes place ahead of every assembly session,” JDU chief whip Shravan Kumar threatened those who disobeyed the whip with “losing their membership.” Jitan Ram Manjhi, the Chief of Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) and a former chief minister of Bihar, has given a whip to JDU’s four MLAs, telling them to vote for the NDA.
On Saturday, February 10, legislators from the opposition ‘Mahagathbandhan’ (Mega-alliance) began to arrive at the Patna residence of Tejashwi Yadav, the leader of the Rashtriya Janata Party (RJD), while the ruling party took care of its business.
Several of the lawmakers were barred from leaving the meeting and going home. Experts say that RJD is concerned that some MLAs may leave the party and join the NDA. One way to prevent further weakening of the opposition is to keep them locked until the voting.
The return of Nitish and the impending collapse of the Indian bloc
It is not unusual for Nitish to re-join the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and this is not the first time the leader of the JP movement has changed his political affiliations. An incensed Kumar left the alliance in 2013, prior to Narendra Modi’s announcement as the PM candidate. He later rejoined in 2017, but the two eventually broke up again in 2022. This time, though, his return has far-reaching effects.
The INDIA bloc’s doom has been decided after Nitish changed sides. The opposition alliance represented the legacy parties’ desperate attempt to halt the BJP’s rampage. The only state in the Hindi heartland where the INDIA bloc had a majority party was Bihar, which held 40 seats in the Lok Sabha.
But now that Nitish is out of the picture, there’s a good chance the BJP will take over the area and increase its wealth. The alliance, which was pieced together after much difficulty in an attempt to keep the BJP-led NDA at bay, effectively showed that it was doomed to fail from the start when it failed at the first hurdle of “seat sharing.”
