However, it does not take much political wisdom to see that the effort may not only turn out to be a damp squib, but will also damage the Bihar chief minister’s image, perhaps to the delight of his foe-turned-uneasy friend, Lalu Prasad Yadav.

As it is, the alliance in Bihar was forged because of the unlikely compromise between Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav which saw the two hurling invectives against each other with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader saying that he had swallowed poison by agreeing to the tie-up and Nitish Kumar comparing himself with the sandalwood tree which exudes a sweet smell even when a snake wraps itself around it.

It was only the possibility of a humiliating defeat at Narendra Modi’s hands with whom Nitish Kumar had a bitter parting of ways when he left the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) company which led to the formation of the gathbandhan. Lalu Yadav, too, needed a stake in power since his conviction in the fodder scam had left him at the mercy of his enemies as he cannot contest an election at present. The Manmohan Singh government’s effort to offer him some relief via an ordinance to negate the judicial diktat was nullified by Rahul Gandhi, who tore up the proposed legislation.

Since then, Rahul has been seen on the same stage with Lalu Yadav at Nitish Kumar’s swearing-in ceremony. It is this shelving of differences which seems to have persuaded the chief minister to believe that the Congress will be a part of the proposed alliance in U.P. If so, it will be another weak component of the group as the Congress is no longer of any consequence in the state. Its tally of 21 parliamentary seats in 2009 is now a distant dream. More relevant are the two seats of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi which the party won in 2014.

The Congress’s irrelevance is matched by some of the other allies which are being courted by Nitish Kumar. These include the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) of Ajit Singh, the Apna Dal of Krishna Patel (which is now with the BJP) and the virtually unknown Peace Party of Mohammed Ayub Ansari. The proposed merger of Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) with RLD is more a sign of their mutual need for crutches in U.P. than an evidence of the identity of ideological convictions.

As is obvious, the two heavyweights – the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) – are missing from Nitish Kumar’s list. And therein lies the rub for, like the DMK and the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, the SP and the BSP have become the two poles of U.P. politics to the exclusion of other parties. They have also been sharing power alternatively in recent years with the BSP defeating the SP in 2007 and then being defeated in turn by the SP in 2012. The chances are, therefore, that it is the BSP’s turn now.

The BJP’s excellent showing in 2014 when it won 71 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats and its ally, the Apna Dal two, had raised hopes of the party faring equally well in next year’s assembly elections. But, in the meantime, the SP’s satisfactory showing in several by-elections had suggested that the Modi magic had begun to fade away. Nitish Kumar’s entry into the fray, therefore, with a gaggle of “has beens” will only complicate the scene without posing any major threat to the two major players – the SP and the BSP with the BJP some distance behind.

It may be believed that the Yadav vote base of the RJD and the Kurmi-Koeri consolidation of the Janata Dal (United) with the RLD’s Jats also lining up behind them will pose some problems to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s SP. But history has shown that the Yadav and other backward castes of UP have generally tended to remain with the SP and have had no time for Lalu Prasad Yadav just as their counterparts have had no time for the SP in Bihar.

It is for this reason that the SP had walked out of the grand alliance in Bihar on the plea that it was not being given an adequate number of seats. In the process, Mulayam Singh wrote “finis” to the prospect of forming an anti-BJP, anti-Congress Janata “parivar” comprising virtually all the remnants of the original Janata Party of 1977 except for the Biju Janata Dal of Odisha. Since Mulayam Singh had evinced little interest in the parivar although he was designated its head, the denial of tickets in the Bihar polls gave him an excuse to scuttle the project.

As the various parties of the backward castes calculate how each will cut into the other’s base of support, the BSP’s Mayawati is likely to feel relatively secure with her solid Dalit vote bank. Her other plus point is the expectation among all sections of voters that she will restore law and order which has been casualty under the SP government. (IPA Service)