There was Eknath Shinde in Bihar, but no Devendra Fadnavis

New Delhi: The absence of Devendra Fadnavis like figure in the Bihar unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party is an important factor behind its failure in carrying out Maharashtra type experiment. The saffron party may have in R C P Singh an Eknath Shinde like personality but none who could fulfil the role of Devendra Fadnavis.

If the BJPs central leadership was really keen to get rid of Nitish and install its own man in Patna and that too from the Janata Dal (United) it should have groomed a Fadnavis The Speaker of Bihar Assembly Vijay Kumar Sinha, the Bihar unit chief of the BJP Sanjay Jaiswal, two deputy chief ministers Tarkishore Prasad and Reenu Devi were no match to the Pundit of politics in Maharashtra.

It is other thing that after June 30 his stature too is being cut by asking him to take oath as the deputy to Eknath Shinde. There is no dearth of Fadnavis type figure in Bihar. They are former deputy CM Sushil

Kumar Modi and two very senior ministers of the previous cabinet, Nand Kishore Yadav and Prem Kumar, especially the former who was the also the state convener of the National Democratic Alliance. But the central leadership of the party clipped their wings after the last Assembly poll of November 2020.

Sushil Modi got a small condolement when he was brought to Rajya Sabha through a by-poll, but the other two have sank into oblivion. This is notwithstanding the fact that while Nand Kishore is a Yadav and Prem Kumar comes from an Extremely Backward Caste. Sushil Modi is from trading community . The social background of all these three leaders is very crucial for the BJP in the state.

If sources within the BJP are too be believed the central leadership never trusted Sushil Modi as he was, in several ways, much more senior leader than many of the present top brass of the saffron brigade.

Besides, he had on several occasions in the past said that Nitish Kumar is a prime ministerial material. This was not like by Narendra Modi who was also in the race for this post.

But one thing can not be ignored; that if Nitish Kumar had made the homecoming to the NDA in July 2017 it was just because of the IRCTC issue raised by Sushil Modi. It was raised in April of the same year and for about four months SuMo carried out this campaign. The central agencies involved in unearthing this racket have in the last five years not made much headway against former railway minister Lalu Prasad.

It is an established fact beyond doubt that Nitish returned to the NDA fold because of his very good equation with Sushil Modi, rather than any other thing.

It is true the BJP central leadership never felt that SuMo could play the role of Fadnavis because of his close proximity with Nitish. Yet there are other players from the state who could have made things possible for the party.

Loud-mouthed Union ministers Giriraj Singh and Ashwini Choubey simply lacked the quality of Fadnavis, who had served as the chief minister of Maharashtra for full five years and know the politics of the state very well.

Minister of state for home Nityanand Rai has not been cut out for such delicate job. Ravi Shankar Prasad, an influential Kayastha face and MP from all important Patna Saheb, may be yelling against Nitish now, yet even his service not taken.

Kayastha, one of the four upper castes of Bihar-Jharkhand, have been voting strongly in favour of the saffron party since 1990 implementation of Mandal Commission report. Yet none of the leader of this caste now occupy any significant position in the party.

Yashwant Sinha, who was born in Patna but contest election from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, Shatrughan Sinha, former Rajya Sabha MP and owner of security agency SIS, R K Sinha have all been sidelined. The first two even went to join the Trinamool Congress. Ravi Shankar Prasad was dropped from the team like a hot potato in a cabinet rejig on July 7, 2021.

Why only Fadnavis. The BJP came back to power in Uttar Pradesh largely because it has Yogi like man in Lucknow. In Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh the party could bounce back only because it was in possession of B S Yediyurappa and Shivraj Singh Chauhan in Bangalore and Bhopal respectively.

The party won the Assembly election in 2021 in Assam largely because of the presence of Himant Biswa Sarma as the CM face while it lost in West Bengal because there was none there. This was the result in spite of the fact that PM Modi campaigned extensively in the state and incumbency factor was working against chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

Thus in the absence of a prominent regional satrap in Bihar the BJP found it extremely difficult to execute its own plan.

-INDIA NEWS STREAM