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The Bharatiya Janata Party has eventually set in motion the process to replace Nitish Kumar with its own chief minister in Bihar.

With the filing of his nomination papers, along with five other National Democratic Alliance candidates for the Rajya Sabha seats on March 5, the Janata Dal (United) president has given a carte blanche to the Hindutva outfit to usher in Narendra Modi-Amit Shah’s brand of politics in the state.

It won’t merely be a change of face – from one chief minister to another – but for the first time, the BJP will have its own chief minister in the state. This will presumably push it closer to its explicit goal of pursuing the kind of anti-minority, majoritarian, and anti-social justice politics that it practices in other states of the Hindi heartland.

Nitish’s social media post announcing his desire to move to the Upper House, and thanking the people for supporting him as CM for over two decades, shocked and awed his JD(U) cadres. They thronged in hordes near 1 Anne Marg, the chief minister’s residence in Patna. Some wailed uncontrollably and the security men kept them at bay.

The JDU has 85 MLAs – the largest group after the BJP with 90 – in the 202-member NDA in the Bihar assembly. What the JD(U) legislators – particularly those belonging to the extremely backward classes (EBCs), which have been Nitish’s backbone over the years – found hard to digest was that the party, which has 12 MPs in the Lok Sabha and on which the minority Narendra Modi government depends for its survival, has allowed the BJP to have its own chief minister.

However, the BJP has systematically and shrewdly weakened Nitish, a leader of razor-sharp mind and impeccable reflexes till not so long ago, by exploiting his progressively sagging health. They were confident that Nitish, who dodged Modi and Shah with his back-and-forth movements between the BJP and the Rashtriya Janata Dal, would never allow........

© The Wire