The BJP and the JDU are once again in alliance for the Bihar assembly polls 2025. The BJP, which claims to be among the world’s largest political parties, has failed to make its own majority road in this Hindi belt state. Twenty years is a long time in politics. Long enough for allies to become adversaries, adversaries to become partners again, and for political fortunes to rise and fall. Yet, in Bihar, one thing has remained curiously constant: the Bharatiya Janata Party’s dependence on Nitish Kumar.
Despite being India’s most powerful political machine — ruling at the Centre for over a decade, expanding across states from Assam to Madhya Pradesh, and scripting historic victories in Uttar Pradesh — the BJP continues to lean on one man in Bihar to stay in power. That man is Nitish Kumar, the wily, unassuming engineer-turned-politician who has outlasted, outmanoeuvred, and outsmarted every partner he’s ever had.
The irony isn’t lost on anyone in Patna’s political circles. After two decades of alliance power, the BJP still needs Nitish to win Bihar.
The Unequal Marriage
When the BJP and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) came together in 2005, it was seen as a marriage of convenience — urban upper-caste votes meeting backward-caste pragmatism. The alliance ended 15 years of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s rule and promised a new era of governance.
It worked. Nitish became the face of “vikas” (development); the BJP, his reliable partner. Roads were built, electricity reached forgotten districts, and the crime rate dipped. The BJP grew under Nitish’s shadow — not as a rival, but as a junior partner content with shared power.
But twenty years later, the arrangement feels frozen in time. Nitish still leads, the BJP still follows despite equal stature in seat sharing. When the BJP contested the Bihar polls alone in 2015, it failed to secure a majority mark.
A Fortress That Refuses to Fall
The BJP’s limited reach in Bihar isn’t for lack of effort. The party has poured resources, deployed star campaigners, and imported strategies that worked elsewhere. Yet, the map of Bihar stubbornly resists saffron uniformity.
The reasons lie deep in the state’s political soil. Bihar’s caste equations are more intricate than ideological. The upper castes — the BJP’s traditional base — make up barely 15% of the population. The rest is divided among backward, extremely backward, Dalit, and minority groups — many of whom continue to vote along identity lines, not ideology.
In regions like Shahabad (Bhojpur, Rohtas, Buxar, Kaimur) and Magadh (Gaya, Aurangabad, Jehanabad), the BJP has struggled for decades. In the 2020 Assembly elections, it won only two out of 21 seats in these areas. Nitish, on the other hand, continues to dominate in the Kosi belt, while Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD still commands the unwavering loyalty of the Muslim–Yadav bloc.
The BJP can win Bihar’s hearts only when it learns to speak Bihar’s language — not Delhi’s – is the common feeling in many villages.
The Leadership Vacuum
The BJP’s other problem is internal — the absence of a leader who can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Nitish Kumar.
There was a time when names like Kailashpati Mishra, Thakur Prasad, and later Sushil Kumar Modi gave the party local roots. Sushil Modi, in particular, balanced Nitish’s authority and kept the alliance functional. But after him, the BJP has experimented with new faces — Tarkishore Prasad, Renu Devi, Samrat Choudhary, and Vijay Sinha — none of whom has inspired confidence or carved an independent identity. The Bihar BJP lacks credible faces with mass appeal to drive waves in favour of the party. None of the current state leaders has a pan-Bihar appeal. This is also largely due to the fact that the BJP has been playing second fiddle in the state for a long time and thus no single leader got the opportunity to become a Chief Minister.
Another problem is the BJP’s quick moves to replace the state leadership. Every few years, the saffron party introduces new leaders, and then quietly replaces them before they can grow. That fear of regional power — the reluctance to build local giants — might explain why the BJP’s Bihar unit remains an appendage of its national leadership, unable to connect emotionally with Bihar’s voters.
The Nitish Paradox
For the BJP, Nitish Kumar is both a blessing and a burden. He gives the party access to backward-caste voters and the credibility of governance. But he also caps its growth. As long as Nitish is around, the BJP cannot create its own Chief Ministerial face; without him, it risks losing power altogether.
Nitish knows this well — and plays his cards accordingly. His repeated exits and re-entries into the NDA fold have often embarrassed the BJP, but each time, the party has welcomed him back. Because it has to.
The BJP can afford to lose Maharashtra or Karnataka for a while. It cannot afford to lose the Hindi heartland’s symbolic centre — Bihar.
What This Says About the BJP
The BJP’s dependence on Nitish Kumar is not just a Bihar story — it’s a reminder of how personality-driven Indian politics still is. The party that prides itself on organizational discipline and ideological strength remains tethered, in one of India’s largest states, to a single regional leader.
In the end, Bihar remains a fortress the BJP can only enter with Nitish’s key. Twenty years of shared power have not changed that equation. And perhaps the question now is not whether the BJP can win Bihar without Nitish — but whether it has ever truly tried to.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: ZEE News
