Nitish whose career was defined by political moves that kept him at the power centre, has now been shown the exit, a final fallout of his political survival at all costs. His tenure also ends with no second rung leadership in the Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)). Both JD(U)’s Sanjay Kumar Jha and Lallan Singh are seen to be close to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), while his son Nishant Kumar has only just entered formal politics. The vacuum left by Nitish’s move to the Rajya Sabha also raises questions about whether Bihar’s politics which has so far resisted the BJP’s politics of polarisation will fall to Hindutva if the saffron party with support from the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) (LJP(RV)) and other National Democratic Alliance (NDA) constituents can continue to hold its formidable rainbow coalition of social caste groups. With Nitish’s exit from the state’s politics, the curtains also come down on the era of social justice leaders leading the state in the aftermath of post Mandal politics. Nitish could not however, remain an exception to the fate that has met most of the BJP’s allies who have either been subsumed or decimated by the BJP, despite alternating between the saffron party and forces against it after the emergence of ModiWhile Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s announcement on March 5, that he had always had a “desire” in his heart to serve in the Rajya Sabha, may have come as a political shock in the state’s politics, ending his tenure as Bihar’s longest serving chief minister, the writing was on the wall during the 2025 assembly elections. The move to the capital may be an apparent show of a dignified exit to the politician who switched alliances multiple times but remained indispensable to the state’s politics as chief minister for two decades. A look at the events leading up to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Janata Dal (United) led National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA’s) resounding victory in the November 2025 elections shows that the script of Nitish’s exit was written before the results were announced.Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar in the presence of Union home minister Amit Shah files nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha polls, in Patna. Photo: PTI.The optics of Union home minister Amit Shah flanking Nitish as he filed his nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha, and Nitish’s son Nishant Kumar, formally joining the JD(U) on Sunday (March 8) in the presence of JD(U) working president Sanjay Kumar Jha and Union minister Lallan Singh, while Nitish himself remained absent, is also not lost.Nitish Kumar’s son Nishant Kumar after joining the Janata Dal (United) JD(U) party in Patna, Bihar on March 8, 2026. Photo: PTI.Nitish, whose career was defined by political moves that kept him at the power centre, has now been shown the exit, a final fallout of his political survival at all costs. While the vacuum left by Nitish’s move to the Rajya Sabha also raises questions about whether Bihar’s politics which has so far resisted the BJP’s politics of polarisation will fall to Hindutva, despite his comings and goings with the BJP, he could not remain an exception to the fate that has met most of the saffron partiy’s allies who have either been subsumed or effectively decimated.Election campaign that sidelined NitishThe November 2025 Bihar assembly elections was widely speculated as Nitish’s swan song. The BJP made little effort to hide that it was waiting in the wings. For the first time, the BJP and the JD(U) contested an equal number of seats: 101. The saffron party stopped short of ever formally naming him as the NDA’s chief ministerial face. No joint rallies were held during the poll campaign. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who held a joint roadshow with Nitish in Patna just a year before during the 2024 Lok Sabha election campaign, chose to hold his roadshow in the state capital for the 2025 assembly elections flanked by JD(U) leader and Union minister Lallan Singh instead. Subsequently, when the NDA released its manifesto in Patna in Nitish’s presence, at a press conference that lasted 26 seconds, the chief minister remained silent.It was Shah himself who had set the cat among the pigeons in October when he refused to name Nitish as the NDA’s chief ministerial face and instead said that a decision will be taken by the elected MLAs after the elections.During the election campaign, while there was unease among JD(U) voters, the BJP insisted that the elections were being contested under Nitish’s leadership, yet they never formally declared him as the chief ministerial face. Nitish Kumar along with Union minister Chirag Paswan at an ‘Iftar’ during the holy month of Ramzan in Patna on March 24, 2025. Photo: PTI.Adding to the mix, questions over the role of Union minister Chirag Paswan and his party the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) (LJP(RV)) being used to checkmate the JD(U) have been swirling since 2020. Nitish’s support among Extremely Backward Classes (EBC) and Dalit groups was eroded in 2020. In 2020, the LJP (RV) contested 135 of Bihar’s 243 assembly seats independently and won only one, but Paswan’s move to field candidates to take on the JD(U) had caused reverses to the JD(U)’s final tally, which reduced to 43.Also read: LJP Split: An Existential Crisis for Chirag Paswan After His Towering Father’s DeathIn the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the LJP(RV) won all the five seats that it contested and Paswan was made a Union minister. In the 2025 assembly elections, Paswan’s party was brought on board to contest an assembly election with the JD(U) for the first time, along with Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM).Nitish defied 20 years of anti-incumbency and the JD(U) won 85 seats, almost doubling its tally from the previous election when it won 43 seats in 2020. The BJP, which won 74 seats in 2020, also improved its tally to win 89 seats. But most importantly, for the first time, it emerged as the single largest party paving the way for Nitish’s exit, and a possible BJP chief minister in the state for the first time.Nitish’s many flip flops and fight till the endIn the last two decades monikers like “paltu ram”, “kursi Kumar”, have been thrown at Nitish. But this did not stop him from remaining at the centre of Bihar’s politics for the last two decades.In January 2024, just months before the Lok Sabha elections, Nitish exited the INDIA alliance, a grouping of which he himself was seen as the chief architect. He resigned as the chief minister, ending the alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and took oath again, this time as the head of the BJP-JD(U) government.Union minister and HAM-S chief Jitan Ram Manjhi meets Nitish Kumar, in Patna on November 18, 2025. Photo: @jitanrmanjhi/X via PTI.In 2013, he ended his 17-year-long alliance with the BJP as he was at unease with the party’s prime ministerial candidate Modi. In 2014, following the BJP’s victory and the JD(U)’s defeat, Nitish claimed moral responsibility and appointed Jitan Ram Manjhi as the chief minister. With support from the RJD-Congress, the JD(U) survived the floor test in the assembly. The next year, Nitish contested the assembly elections as a part of the Mahagathbandhan with the RJD-Congress. He then rejoined the NDA in 2017, and left it again in 2022 and then rejoined again in 2024. While the JD(U) faced significant reverses and won 43 seats in the 2020 Bihar assembly elections, it emerged as the BJP’s key ally in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. With its 12 seats in the Lok Sabha, the JD(U) along with the Telugu Desam Party’s (TDP’s) 16 are crucial to the BJP government at the Centre after the saffron party failed to form a government on its own, winning only 240 seats.Also read: Nitish Kumar’s Exit Will Pave the Way for the Remaking of Bihar’s PoliticsThe 2025 Bihar assembly elections showed that Nitish’s corruption-free tenure of the last two decades, enduring support among the Extremely Backward Class (EBC) groups, women, and legacy as “sushasan babu” (Mr Good governance) had held him in good stead as the JD(U) won 84 seats, just five short of the BJP’s tally.The election results showed that while Nitish may have switched alliances multiple times, he remained an indispensable force in Bihar’s politics.Social justice politicsWith Nitish’s exit from the state’s politics, the curtains also come down on the era of social justice leaders leading the state in the aftermath of post Mandal politics. While Nitish moves to the Rajya Sabha and is suffering from ill health, so is his former colleague from the Jay Prakash Narayan movement Lalu Prasad Yadav, who is effectively out of active politics.Born out of the JP movement in the late 1970s, Nitish won his first assembly election in 1985 from the Harnaut constituency after two consecutive defeats. In 1989, he won the Lok Sabha election from neighbouring Barh, and later floated his own party, the Samata Party with George Fernandes. The Samata Party faced a setback in the 1995 Bihar assembly elections, winning only seven seats as RJD)chief and Nitish’s former colleague from the JP movement Lalu retained power.Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar in happier times. Photo: PTI.After a stint in the Union government as railway minister, Nitish continued a campaign against Lalu’s “jungle raj” (lawlessness) in Bihar and became chief minister in 2005 after successfully uniting the opposition by allying with the BJP and dislodging the RJD.Nitish’s victory in 2005, followed over a decade of consolidating support among the EBC communities, considered to be more backward among the Other Backward Classes. His split with Lalu became formal in 1994 at a rally in Patna’s Gandhi Maidan where Kurmis had gathered in the wake of the post Mandal agitation, and growing anger amid speculation that Kurmis could be taken off the quota list. Sankarshan Thakur in his book ‘Single Man: The Life and Times of Nitish Kumar of Bihar‘ writes about that fateful day in 1994 when Nitish took the stage at the anti-Lalu rally, formalising the split.After hours of dilemma of whether he should defy Lalu, Nitish took to the stage and declared: “Bheekh nahin hissedari chahiye,’ he roared from the lectern. ‘Jo sarkar hamare hiton ko nazarandaz karti hai who sarkar satta mein reh nahin sakti.’ … (We seek our rightful share, not charity, a government that ignores our interests cannot be allowed to remain in power),” wrote Thakur.Nitish slowly emerged as the decisive Kurmi leader. According to the state government’s 2022 caste survey, EBCs form about 36% of Bihar’s population and form Nitish’s core supporters, who he separated from the Yadavs and provided targeted welfare schemes, as well as reservations in local government bodies.The predominance of social justice politics in the state, with Nitish at the helm also saw Bihar resisting the Hindutva politics witnessed in the rest of the Hindi belt and the BJP unable to form a government on its own despite its growing dominance since 2014.In addition, Nitish also built a reputation of good governance, and was known as “sushasan babu” having garnered goodwill in the state by bringing in infrastructural development including roads, bridges, electricity.He also cultivated a loyal voter base among women voters in Bihar. Just a year after coming to power, his government provided 50% reservations for women in local rural and urban bodies. He also expanded welfare schemes and interventions for women and provided 35% reservation for women in state government jobs, as well as financial assistance to female students until they finish their graduation. These schemes and policy initiatives have been credited for the high female voter turnout in recent elections in the state. Nitish not an exception to BJP subsuming its alliesHowever, Nitish could not remain an exception to the fate that has met most of the BJP’s allies despite alternating between BJP and anti-BJP forces after the emergence of Modi. Union Minister and LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan with Nitish Kumar during an iftar party in Patna on November 8, 2004. Photo: PTI.While politics in Bihar has been seen through the lens of Mandal versus Kamandal (OBC assertion opposed to Hindutva unity that seeks to subsume all caste groups under the Hindu umbrella), Nitish attempted to walk the tight rope, by alternating between the BJP and anti-BJP parties. With Lalu ill, Nitish moved to the Rajya Sabha, Sharad Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan and George Fernandes passing away, the social justice politics that dominated Bihar in the aftermath of the Mandal Commission report in 1990 has turned a page.Crucially, like most of the other parties and leaders from the JP movement, Nitish too leaves the political arena after being subsumed by the BJP, with his party’s survival at stake. A similar trajectory has played out for the BJP’s other allies in the last decade, including the Shiv Sena (the BJP’s oldest ally) having been split. Eknath Shinde who was the BJP’s man to split the party, was used to contest the Maharashtra assembly elections in 2024, but quickly sidelined subsequently and made deputy chief minister to a BJP chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. The NCP split engineered by Ajit Pawar did not win him much favour either with the BJP, as he was kept under pressure with the heat of investigative agencies on him despite being part of the coalition government in Maharashtra. Nitish, despite heading a party that ensures BJP’s survival in the Centre after 2024, has also been summarily ejected from the state.What next?While the BJP had stopped short of wholly sidelining Nitish before the election, it has now successfully engineered his political exit marking the beginning of a new chapter in Bihar’s politics where social justice politics dominated the discourse. Such has been its predominance that even in previous elections, when the BJP has won more seats than the JD(U), the chief minister’s post was given to Nitish due to his broadbased support.Nitish Kumar during the Winter session in Bihar assembly in Patna on December 4, 2025. Photo: PTI.Nitish despite allying with the BJP at different points, stayed away from importing its Hindutva politics in the state. As he is now removed, the field is open for the BJP which already ran its 2025 election campaign as a fight to keep out “ghuspaithiya” (infiltrators) through the contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state. The campaign ironically, came just five years after the Nitish-led state assembly, with the BJP’s support, unanimously passed a resolution rejecting a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC) despite the JD(U) having supported the CAA in parliament.That politically astute Nitish, who showed political defiance, has been seen in recent months around Modi, attempting to touch his feet including when he took oath as chief minister in November.Nitish whose career was defined by political moves that kept him at the power centre, has now been shown the exit, a final fallout of his political survival at all costs. His tenure also ends with no second rung leadership in the JD(U). Both Jha and Singh are seen to be close to the BJP, while his son Nishant has only just entered formal politics. Finally, the vacuum left by Nitish’s move to the Rajya Sabha also raises questions about whether Bihar’s politics which has so far resisted the BJP’s politics of polarisation will fall to Hindutva if the saffron party with support from the LJP(RV) and other NDA constituents can continue to hold its formidable rainbow coalition of social caste groups.