With Lalu gone, UPA and BJP battle for Bihar's political spoils

Lalu Prasad Yadav, for long the subaltern hero and Mandal politics mascot, has finally been convicted in a fodder scam case and jailed. Along with Congress MP Rashid Masood, he will have the rare distinction of being the first to lose membership of Parliament. More importantly, they will lose the right to contest the next Parliamentary elections.

Masood is a mere footnote but the RJD leader is the headline, a lead character in contemporary political history from the way he catapulted to power in 1990 in Bihar, the way he stopped and arrested the hero of the ‘Kamandals’ LK Advani on his Ramrath to become a Mandalite secular messiah and stitched up a formidable Muslim-Yadav social formation, the way he shaped the fate of two prime ministers, Deve Gowda and IK Gujral, in the United Front government in 1996-98, the way he ruled through proxy after making his wife Rabri Devi chief minister when he first went to jail in July 1997 and still win elections, the way he built long-term camaraderie with the Congress through the past two decades, beginning with Sitaram Kesri and then with Sonia Gandhi and nearly even getting his way in forcing through an ordinance passed by the UPA and designed specifically to protect his political career.

But then Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi who had other thoughts about him, not exactly matching his mother’s, arrived on the scene and thwarted Lalu. By the time a special CBI court found him guilty of criminal conspiracy to fraudulent withdrawals from the state treasury, Rahul had already sealed his fate.

Ironically, Lalu was convicted on charges of criminal conspiracy under Section 120B of the Indian Penal Code, but outside the courtroom, while he was being taken to Birsa Munda jail, his son and chief claimant for leadership in the RJD, Tejaswi Yadav, claimed that his father had become a victim of “conspiracy”. Their political opponents would be given a fitting reply in the elections, he promised. Strong words those, but based on ground realities in Bihar and at the Centre, Tejaswi, who spent long years sitting on the benches in the Delhi Daredevils team of IPL, sounded hollow.

The RJD, which Lalu ran like a family property, faces an existential like never before. Lalu had broken away from the Janata Dal to form his own party, ironically in the aftermath of CBI’s investigations and amid apprehensions of being sent to jail despite him being part of the United Front’s power structure at the Centre, a supporter of then prime minister  IK Gujral.

The Bihar unit of Janata Dal had shifted lock, stock and barrel with him. The Congress too supported him when he installed Rabri as CM.

But, unlike in 1997, Lalu has not worked out a succession plan before his departure for jail. If there was any game plan, it was derailed by Rahul Gandhi, leaving the issue of leadership wide open in the RJD.

Former union minister and MP Raghuvansh Prasad Singh made his intentions clear when he said, somewhat  bluntly, that “there are  several young leaders in the party and Tejaswi is one of them”. Ditto for another MP, trusted lieutenant of Lalu, Ram Kripal Yadav who said Rabri Devi was their leader and senior leaders would sit and decide on future course of action.

Rabri herself has lost Assembly elections from two constituencies that she contested in. She has more or less returned to pre-1997 role of a homemaker. Her clout has diminished. Lalu’s sons Tejaswi and Tej Pratap have so far not been acceptable beyond the walls of their home.

The key question now is how RJD’s existential crisis will play out in the next Parliamentary elections, as also in the Bihar Assembly. Its now very clear that Congress under Rahul Gandhi’s command would not align with RJD. Bihar chief minister and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar has moved closer to Congress. Nitish even supported Rahul’s description of the ordinance as “nonsense”, even if it diminished the  PM’s position. The JD(U) also supported the Congress by abstaining in the final JPC meet on the 2G scam when chairman PC Chacko pushed for adoption of the report to give a clean chit to PM and FM.

The Congress-JD(U) may or may not have a pre-poll alliance but it is certain that they will have an understanding in the changing equations at the national level. If the two parties come together, Muslims could desert the RJD and join the new alliance to stop the onward march of Narendra Modi, A triangular contest would have helped Modi in Bihar, but a bi-polar contest could be far more interesting.

The BJP’s fortunes would then largely depend on how the Yadavs decide to vote. Will there be a sympathy factor for Lalu and the RJD? The writing on the wall indicates otherwise. The Yadav caste has for 19 years, from 1990-2009 (15 years of Lalu-Rabri regime in Bihar and five years of Lalu’s reign as rail minister), socially and politically enjoyed the perks of the ruling class. They are a dominant caste and constitute around 16 per cent of the population. There is a possibility that a substantive section of them, in their hatred to Nitish, may prefer Modi. If that happens, the BJP will have a formidable social combination to go for the polls.

There is a great deal of speculation on what JD(U) president Sharad Yadav might do, if Nitish finally sides with the Congress. The former NDA convener’s long years in politics have been built on anti-Congressism and it is not easy for him to reconcile with his party’s strongman (Nitish) cementing a cozy understanding with the Congress.

The JD(U) leaders are also looking to gain from a possible split in the RJD in the Bihar Assembly. The RJD currently has 19 seats in Assembly and four in Parliament.

The politics of early 1990s that catapulted Lalu as a new subaltern hero who propagated a counter culture of under development, has moved on. He still is a sharp political mind but, as they say, his luck run out. He went to jail in Jharkhand, a state that he once declared would be created over his dead body. With Lalu in the Birsa Munda jail in Ranchi, the battle for spoils begins in Bihar.