Nitish Kumar, the man behind the mahadalit idea, has got to be in a bind, though JD(U) leader and Rajya Sabha member Pavan Varma would have us believe otherwise.
"There will be no rethinking on supporting Ram Nath Kovind. It was a well thought out decision by Nitish Kumar" said Varma.
If Kumar decided to back NDA's presidential candidate because he was the governor of Bihar and a dalit, he may have to rethink. The nominee of opposition parties, Meira Kumar, hails from Bihar, represented the state in Lok Sabha, is a dalit and a woman.
However, if Kumar had thought about gradually letting go of his Bihar government coalition partners , the RJD and the Congress, and joining hands with former friend, the BJP, he is unlikely to change his decision to extend support to Kovind.
RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav told the media after the opposition meeting that Kumar had informed him about his decision to support Kovind before making it public. Lalu said he had cautioned the chief minister and suggested that he waits till the meeting, scheduled for Thursday, is over. "But he acted in a hurry. He should have waited".
Lalu refused to discuss the possible impact of Kumar's decision on the Bihar government.
For sometime now, there has been a gut feeling in the political circles in the national capital that Kumar, while acknowledged as an important mover in the plan to unite the non-BJP opposition, was moving away. He had recently skipped a luncheon appointment with Congress president Sonia Gandhi—ironically, the subject was the presidential elections—but arrived in Delhi the next day to meet and have lunch with the prime minister. And he had not paused to discuss the support to Kovind, "when there was no hurry", as a BSP leader put it.
While it is too soon to see any impact of Kumar decision on the government in Bihar, the JD(U) and the BJP together do not have the numbers to form government in Bihar. Kumar cannot afford to dump his partners while the latter cannot do anything about his support to Kovind.
