When Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar filed nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha on Thursday (March 5, 2026), it set off a rash of speculation on the future of Bihar politics and his party, the Janata Dal(U), obscuring the fact that getting its Chief Minister in the State after decades of trying presents several challenges for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Several names may be floating around from the party as a replacement for Mr. Kumar, and the BJP high command’s now-famous ‘chit strategy’ of springing a last-minute surprise candidate for the top job may be an exercise in political control, but the situation comes with its own ‘day-after’ problem.
For the BJP, and its earlier avatar the Jan Sangh, the growth in Bihar was hard-won through the wilderness years when the Congress ruled, to its role as a vanguard against the Lalu Prasad government and the highs of the fodder scam. Leaders such as Nand Kishore Yadav (recently elevated to governor of Nagaland), Kailashpati Mishra, former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha, Ravi Shankar Prasad and the late Sushil Kumar Modi steered the BJP in the years leading up to the bifurcation of Bihar and Jharkhand, and before finally allying with the JD(U) in its earlier avatar, the Samata Party, in the mid 1990s.
