NEW DELHI: And the winner is … Well, if it’s Bihar, who else but Nitish Kumar. The JD(U) chief, who was contesting the 2025 assembly elections with his back to the wall, has fought against all odds to prove yet again that he is the undisputed leader of Bihar. Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), which had managed only 43 assembly seats five years back, has made massive gains nearly doubling his tally. The JD(U) this time around has won 85 seats to emerge as the second largest party in the state.
A poster featuring Nitish standing besides a tiger, captioned boldly ‘tiger abhi zinda hai’ (tiger is alive), sums up the amazing turnaround achieved by the septuagenarian leader – who was left to fend for himself amid unrelenting onslaught by the opposition.
Election Results 2025
In the run up to assembly elections, questions were raised on his mental health, his ability to govern and also about his loosening hold over the JD(U). While RJD’s Tejashwi claimed that the JD(U) was being run by the BJP, Jan Suraj chief Prashant Kishor repeatedly asserted that Nitish Kumar’s party would not get more than 25 seats in the assembly elections.To make matters worse, ally BJP, which had projected Nitish as NDA’s chief ministerial candidate in earlier assembly elections, this time around announced that the leader of NDA will be decided by the legislators after the results are out. When it came to seat sharing, Nitish had to counter the influence of his bete noire Chirag Paswan, who had raised the pitch against his government by openly criticising the law and order situation in the state. After 20 years of rule, anti-incumbency was one of the biggest hurdles in the path of Nitish Kumar.However, undeterred by all these pressures, Nitish hit the ground running and kept focus on his development agenda. He aggressively groomed his core base of women voters – whose silent and invisible support most likely played a key role in JD(U)’s victory. Nitish announced several schemes, enhanced cash components of several existing programmes. The Centre’s move to give Rs 10,000 to 72 lakh women also helped Nitish reinforce appeal among his core support base.Ironically, despite his spectacular come-back, Nitish may not be the natural choice to become the next chief minister of the state – much to the disappointment of the JD(U). With the BJP outperforming JD(U) by increasing its tally to 92 and the smaller allies together winning 27 seats, the NDA will be within striking distance of the majority mark of 122 even without Nitish Kumar in its fold. It’s a different matter though that JD(U)’s support is crucial for the BJP at the Centre and hence, any final decision on the top post will involve a lot of hard bargaining from both sides.