BJP signal: No playing second fiddle in Bihar

New Delhi : Even as the Bihar allies-BJP and JD-U-are claiming “all is well”, the fast-changing political canvas in the state appears to be far from settled and a perception has gone down that the saffron outfit is not ready to play the second fiddle to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s party.There were clear indications that the JD-U would get ministerial berths in the Narendra Modi government. But, when the expansion-cum-reshuffle of Union Council of Ministers took place today, there was none from the JD-U and instead the BJP leadership decided to drop one (Rajiv Pratap Rudy) and induct two (RK Singh and Ashwini Kumar Choubey) from the state, while retaining Giriraj Singh, a Bhumihar.  The selections from Bihar not only send signal to the BJP’s core forward caste support base, these also balance the intra-party equations. Choubey, a Brahmin and an MP from Buxar, has had an uneasy relationship with Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi and his induction is seen as a balancing act by the party.
Induction of Singh, a former bureaucrat and an MP from Arrah, is seen as rehabilitation. He was once left in cold after his outburst against the party’s choice of candidates following the humiliating drubbing in the 2015 Assembly elections. But luck favoured him, as Modi chose Singh, a Rajput by caste, to replace Rudy.
Thus, the BJP, along with its apparent OBC-outreach programme, has set an eye to consolidate its support base among the forward castes by giving representation to all three dominant ones — Brahmin, Bhumihar and Rajput. Meanwhile, the spin doctors in the two Bihar allies in the course of the day were found quick to explain the denial of ministerial berth to Kumar’s party, as one of the senior JD-U leaders went to the extent of claiming that a short expansion in the Union Council of Ministers would “take place once Modi returns from the China-Myanmar visit”.