Rajya Sabha election LIVE: Nitish Kumar to file nomination papers today; ending tenure as Bihar’s longest-serving CM

A comment circulating online perfectly summarizes the political developments in Bihar: “It took a global war for a regime change in Iran to affect Bihar.”

Nitish Kumar, the state’s longest-serving chief minister, is heading to the Rajya Sabha, ceding power to his National Democratic Alliance ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the party is finally at the top.

Over the years, the relationship between the Janata Dal(U) and the BJP – ever since the time when the JD(U) was the Samata Party – has been full of twists and turns, with one constant factor: Nitish Kumar being the chief ministerial face.

This constancy in the face of the alliance since 2000, when the Samata Party won fewer seats than the BJP but Mr. Kumar was projected as chief minister for a brief seven-day stint in a short-lived claim, till 2025, when the BJP again won more seats than the JD(U), was a product of Bihar’s political landscape and also of Mr. Kumar’s image and personality.

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