After years of pillion-riding, BJP readies to take the driving seat in Bihar

When Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar filed nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha on Thursday (March 5, 2026), it set off a rash of speculation on the future of Bihar politics and his party, the Janata Dal(U), obscuring the fact that getting its Chief Minister in the State after decades of trying presents several challenges for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Several names may be floating around from the party as a replacement for Mr. Kumar, and the BJP high command’s now-famous ‘chit strategy’ of springing a last-minute surprise candidate for the top job may be an exercise in political control, but the situation comes with its own ‘day-after’ problem.

For the BJP, and its earlier avatar the Jan Sangh, the growth in Bihar was hard-won through the wilderness years when the Congress ruled, to its role as a vanguard against the Lalu Prasad government and the highs of the fodder scam. Leaders such as Nand Kishore Yadav (recently elevated to governor of Nagaland), Kailashpati Mishra, former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha, Ravi Shankar Prasad and the late Sushil Kumar Modi steered the BJP in the years leading up to the bifurcation of Bihar and Jharkhand, and before finally allying with the JD(U) in its earlier avatar, the Samata Party, in the mid 1990s.

The BJP was quick to realise the benefits of the alliance, the 1990s being the high noon of coalition politics. For the many years that the BJP had an alliance with the JD(U), it remained there with a profound sense of the nature of the political field in Bihar – caste arithmetic, social justice politics, socialism, and its own Hindutva and largely upper caste appeal which appeared at odds but was quite complimentary to Mr. Kumar’s support base of non-Yadav OBCs, Extremely Backward Classes and women.

Thus, the alliance ran with the BJP deliberately remaining a step back and not claiming the Chief Minister’s position even if its number outstripped the JD(U). Sushil Kumar Modi as Deputy Chief Minister, and by then the tallest leader within the BJP, managed that relationship, sometimes not to the satisfaction of its own leaders, as in 2010 when Mr. Kumar cancelled a dinner invitation to then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi during the BJP’s national executive meet in Patna.

Mr. Kumar walked in and out of the alliance at will and the BJP always welcomed him back, the complimentary support bases pushing the alliance. This holding back by the BJP has landed the party in a challenging situation right at the time when it has its first clear shot at the Chief Minister’s chair – with no big faces or leaders around to claim both the post and public support.

The BJP has a deep bench strength of leaders from several communities – like deputy Chief Minister Samrat Chaudhary as a non-Yadav OBC, Sanjeev Chaurasia who belongs to the Tambauli caste or EBC category, Union Minister Nityanand Rai who is a Yadav. Whoever gets the chair, however, will have the unenviable task of not only governing Bihar but be the mascot of the transition that the State’s polity and the BJP make in the post-Nitish Kumar era. This will involve new alliances, and community coalitions, Bihar being one of the most politically experimental States in the country.

For the BJP the certainties of alliance with JD(U) are now over, the challenge of consolidating that support base remains.