Bihar Politics: Why Nitish Kumar Has Turned Irreplaceable For BJP, RJD?-OxBig News Network

Bihar Chunav 2025: It was in 2005 when Nitish Kumar dethroned the Rashtriya Janata Dal-government to become Chief Minister of Bihar. Since then, Kumar has continued to remain at the top post barring a brief period when Jitan Ram Manjhi was made the CM in 2014. However, since then, Kumar has retained the top post despite switching sides between the BJP and the RJD. Kumar left the BJP twice to side with the RJD between 2015-2017 and 2022-2024,

On both occasions, the BJP agreed to take him back and it even paid for the NDA in the 2020 assembly elections and 2024 Lok Sabha Polls. A close look at vote percentage show that Nitish Kumar continues to command a significant hold electorally, thus making him the kingmaker for both – the BJP and the RJD.

In the 2005 Bihar assembly polls, Nitish Kumar’s JDU got around 20% votes and 88 seats; in 2010, the JDU got around 23% votes with 115 seats; in 2015 assembly polls, the JDU got 71 seats with around 17% vote share and in the 2020 lok sabha polls, the JDU got 15.39% votes with 43 seats, suffering a heavy damage due to LJP’s open campaign against it. With the LJP-RV back in NDA fold and agreeing to Nitish Kumar’s leadership, the JDU’s vote share is likely to recover this year in the polls.

The BJP on the other hand, has managed to keep its vote share between 16-20 per cent. On the other hand, the RJD got 23% in 2005, 19% in 2010, 19% in 2015 and 23% in 2020. Thus, the poll dynamics shows a fractured mandate when it comes to vote share and individual party-wise seats. In this scenario, it’s Kumar’s JDU that holds the key to power. 

This election, there is another contender who is going to make the poll interesting. It’s Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj. Kishor has worked with the BJP, JDU and Congress as a political analyst and knows the parties very well. Jan Suraaj has done well in the recent assembly bypolls and it it manages to get around 10% votes, then it may alter the poll dynamics.