MANAGING TENSIONS

TILL A LAST-DAY PATCH-UP SAW MGB NAME TEJASHWI AS CM FACE, BIHAR LOOKED LIKE A ROUND ROBIN LEAGUE-EVERYONE AGAINST EVERYONE

- BY AMITABH SRIVASTAVA

THE BARD AND BIHAR. THEY MAY SEEM PLANETS APART, BUT WHAT UNFOLDED in Muzaffarpur, on stage at that, was like the classic comic interlude set within a dark and complex Shakespeare play. It was the day after Diwali. Nitish Kumar had just wrapped up a 28-minute speech. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidates from two adjoining constituencies were called for the ritual jeet ki mala—an anticipatory garland of victory. Rama Nishad, the BJP candidate from Aurai, stepped up. Nitish reached out to garland her. Instinctively, Janata Dal (United) working president Sanjay Jha intervened, mindful of the optics. Would it be appropriate for the septuagenarian CM to garland a woman before the cameras?

Nitish paused, visibly annoyed, then went ahead anyway. The mic picked up his half-jocular snarl: “Gajab aadmi hai bhai, haath kaahe pakadte ho (What a man! Why are you holding my hand)?”

Friendly fire it was, but only a friendlier pocket edition of the fireworks that had been heating up Bihar. As it tears down the tarmac towards voting day, it’s no straightforward contest between two alliances, the NDA and the Mahagathbandhan (MGB). Instead, it has often looked more like a round robin league with a series of mini-matches. Everyone against everyone else—NDA vs NDA, MGB vs MGB, and smaller subsets of that within each constituent party.