The stage seems to be set for Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) supremo Nitish Kumar, 72, to return to the BJP-led NDA again. If Nitish switches sides, this will mark the fourth time in just over a decade that he would do it.

Nitish’s shift would deal a severe blow to the ruling Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) in Bihar as well as the Opposition INDIA bloc at the national level.

The first time Nitish, the eight-term Bihar CM adept at the game of political survival, took his party to the Opposition camp was in June 2013 when he severed ties with the BJP on the ground that the NDA should have a leader with a “clean and secular image”. At the time, it had become apparent that then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi would be the NDA’s Prime Ministerial face for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and that the NDA would have no space for the Bihar CM’s political ambitions.

Nitish then gave a call for “Sangh-mukt Bharat” and went on to declare that “mitti mein mil jayenge, BJP ke saath wapas nahi jayenge (I would prefer to be reduced to dust rather than going back to BJP)”.

Two years later, in the run-up to the Bihar Assembly elections held in November 2015, Nitish joined hands with arch rival Lalu Prasad-led RJD and the Congress and some other smaller parties to form the Mahagathbandhan that won 178 seats out of the state’s total 243 seats. Subsequently, Nitish again took over as the CM.

The JD(U) chief who often talks of the “3Cs” of crime, corruption and communalism was, however, accused of dropping one “C” (communalism) for another (corruption). In the end, corruption allegations against the RJD’s Deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav led him to break up with the RJD in July 2017.

Nitish then again forged an alliance with the BJP and formed their government. Everything went on smoothly in the NDA till the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when the BJP won all 17 seats it contested and the JD(U) bagged 16 of the 17 constituencies where it was in the fray.

But their ties began to fray before the Assembly elections the following year as the BJP appeared in two minds about declaring Nitish as the NDA’s CM candidate again and on contesting an equal number of seats.

In the end, the BJP had to declare Nitish as the CM candidate and also agreed to share an equal number of seats in the polls. But the BJP allegedly attempted to bring the JD(U)’ down a notch or two by getting the LJP to walk out of the NDA and getting its leader Chirag Paswan to contest almost all seats where JD(U) candidates were in the fray. The LJP factor played a role in the JD(U)’s tally reducing from 71 to 43 seats, with the Nitish-led party now third behind the RJD and the BJP.

With the BJP now an equal partner more than ever before, there was again a growing strain in Nitish’s relations with the BJP leadership as the latter aggressively focused on its organisational growth and its leaders kept firing salvos at the CM on various matters.

Nitish also differed with the BJP on the population control proposal, caste census, demand for special category status for Bihar, and the denial of Central University status to Patna University. Believing that his national ambitions would be better served in the Opposition, Nitish rejoined hands with the RJD and was back in the Mahagathbandhan in August 2022 and kept a hold on the CM’s chair. Early last year, he started making cross-country visits, visiting leaders such as Mamata Banerjee and Uddhav Thackeray, in an attempt to bring various anti-BJP parties on a common platform. His efforts paid off with the formation of the INDIA alliance, which now seems to be unravelling barely a couple of months before the Lok Sabha elections.