Successful public meeting at Varanasi by Nitish Kumar has unnerved major political parties in UP - BSP, BJP and Samajwadi Party. These political parties are all the more shocked when Nitish Kumar set the agenda for Mission 2017 through his call for prohibition to win over the women who constitute half of the total electorates.

It would be worth mentioning here that Nitish Kumar got the overwhelming support of women on the issue of prohibition, which was recently implemented in Bihar.

Nitish Kumar is all set to win over his own caste, Kurmi, backward votes who a play very important role in a large number of assembly constituencies. They are the next most powerful backward community after Yadavs, who are being pampered by Akhilesh Yadav government.

Nitish Kumar is also aware that the Kurmi community is feeling left out as all the major political parties have sidelined senior Kurmi leaders. Prominent BJP leaders belonging to Kurmi caste - Om Prakash Singh and Vinay Katiyar- have now been sidelined.

Significantly enough, Nitish Kumar challenged Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue of prohibition but saffron party is also aware about possible poaching of Kurmi voters by Nitish Kumar for his party JD(U) and possible alliance with Congress and RLD.

Senior Kurmi leaders in BJP are upset as party high command made Keshav Prasad Maurya as state president while ignoring claim of other community leaders.

Enthused by success of his Varanasi meeting, Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav announced that JD(U) would contest UP Assembly seats on its own. They also announced that party would go in for alliance with like-minded parties.

It would be worth mentioning here that Prashant Kishore, who was instrumental for spectacular win for Modi and BJP in 2014 and for Nitish in Bihar 2015, is now working for revival Congress in UP. According to informed sources, Prashant wants to forge alliance of JD (U) with Congress and RLD of Ajit Singh. He may work out other smaller parties to join this alliance to be a major player in UP.

Prashant is working on a Brahmin face for Congress while Nitish Kumar as main face of JD(U) and Jat leader Ajit Singh or his young son to lead RLD to present credible combination of upper and backward castes before the voters.

The sudden entry of veteran Kurmi leader Beni Prasad Verma to Samajwadi Party is considered to be desperate attempt of Mualyam Singh Yadav to prevent of the imminent exodus of Kurmi votes by Nitish Kumar. Mulayam Singh Yadav realisedthat Nitish Kumar may challenge BJP but it would ultimately damage Samajwadi Party in assembly polls. Within no time, Mulayam got Beni back to party fold after seven years with the promise to send him to Rajya Sabha and to give his son assembly ticket next year. Beni Prasad Verma, who had been a close lieutenant of Mulayam, has been minister in state as well central cabinet. He was sulking in Congress for past quite some time after being dumped by party high command.

Prominent political analyst Dr Ramesh Dixit said that the combination of various political parties representing different caste planks could play important role in forthcoming assembly polls and may spring surprise results. (IPA Service)