Bihar Dy CM Sushil Modi finds fault with Shiv Sena after 35 years of alliance

In this theatre of the absurd, perhaps the most outlandish statement on Maharashtra came from Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi.

Commenting after the oath-taking of Devendra Fadnavis as the chief minister and Ajit Pawar as his deputy, SuMo found similarity in the culture of Shiv Sena and Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar. He said that both these two outfits rely on goons and cannot be trusted.

The funniest aspect of his statement is that he realized these ‘qualities’ of Shiv Sena after a 35-year long association. The origin of Sena-BJP ties can be traced back to 1984.

Nobody knows as to what SuMo was trying to suggest by his remarks, yet one thing is clear: the credit of being untrustworthy goes not to Lalu Prasad’s party but to chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United.

For all his faults, Lalu does not change sides at the drop of a hat. He has been consistent in opposing the BJP ever since 1990 and his ties with the Congress can be traced back to late 1990s.

In contrast, it is ‘good friends’ Nitish and Lok Janshakti Party leader Ram Vilas Paswan, who have betrayed their alliance partners several times.

One need not explain the whole chain of events since 2013 to highlight as to how many times and how many people have Nitish ‘ditched.

SuMo should not complain about RJD as it has never allied with the saffron brigade. The maximum one can accuse Lalu is that he had engineered a split in the Bihar BJP legislative party after the arrest of Lal Krishna Advani in 1990.

That was the time when the BJP and Left parties were lending outside support to Lalu and one-third of the saffron party legislators joined the then Janata Dal ahead of trust votes. Then the criteria for split in the legislative party was one-third, later extended to two-thirds.

Unlike JDU and LJP, the RJD had never been in alliance with the BJP, therefore equating it with the Shiv Sena is wrong.

It seems that at the height of the Maharashtra drama SuMo wanted to be counted in the good book of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who always looked at him with suspicious after he in 2013, and even before, had openly said that Nitish Kumar is a prime ministerial material.

As Bihar BJP has no leader of the stature of SuMo, who continues to be loyal to Nitish, the central leadership finds it difficult to stage a Maharashtra type coup.

In spite of repeated attacks by hawks like Union minister Giriraj Singh on Nitish, the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo is unable to dump Nitish.

Anyway, there is a message for the Bihar chief minister in the present development in Maharashtra. If the BJP can go to any extend in dealing with a party as strong as Shiv Sena, it may hardly face any difficulty in tackling Nitish. Afterall, JDU is not a party of cadres and hardcore supporters.

Its legislators can be wooed much more easily and smoothly if any such circumstances arises in future.

Besides, unlike Shiv Sena, Nitish has in the last six years annoyed a large number of saffron party leaders. They have not forgotten the ‘dinner cancellation’ in 2010, snapping of ties in 2013 and the vociferous Assembly election campaign in 2015.

It was not Lalu, but Nitish and the BJP bigwigs who exchanged some of the choicest political abuses on the run up to that election.