Who is on the CBI radar: Lalu or Nitish?

Bihar politics has been juggled up after Friday's CBI raids on premises owned by RJD chief Lalu Prasad and family members in a fresh case described as the "land for jobs" or the Railways recruitment scam of 2008. Prasad is alleged to have promised Group-D railway jobs in exchange for rural land donated by candidates to companies linked with Prasad and family members. 

After an impressive electoral victory in adjoining Uttar Pradesh, the BJP - the bigger alliance  partner of the Nitish Kumar-led coalition government of Bihar -has been pressuring Kumar to vacate the Chief Ministership in favour of a nominee of the saffron party. BJP governments in both Uttar Pradesh and Bihar will ostensibly provide for the right optics for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 2024 Lok Sabha campaign. 

The trouble, however, has remained that 71-year-old Kumar has apparently been unwilling to sign off his political innings to accept the BJP offer for either a ceremonial post or a berth in the Union cabinet. In past weeks, Kumar has been perceived as reworking a pact with the RJD in a possible move to continue as chief minister with support of Prasad's party. 

State BJP leaders believe that the current round of CBI raids will preempt the possibility of an emerging axis between Prasad and Kumar. To that extent, the CBI challenge is directed both at Prasad and Kumar - friends turned foes who have ruled Bihar for the last three decades. 

The Politics of CBI raids

When the CBI last raided Prasad and family in 2017 in the "hotels for land" case involving the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), the then "mahagathbandhan" government - comprising Kumar's Janata Dal (United) apart from the RJD and Congress - had collapsed. 

In the assembly elections held three years later, the RJD-led secular alliance provided for a stiff challenge to the BJP-JDU alliance; remaining marginally short of the majority mark in the state assembly. 

The point is this: Corruption charges are unlikely to dent Prasad's political clout further. In the four fodder scam cases in which he has so far been convicted, Prasad has already served half the sentence period. He can well be expected to take the fresh CBI case in his stride. 

Given his health status - when he is battling kidney and heart related ailments -he might even generate sympathy among his constituents. The timing of the CBI raids - approximately 14 years after the case had erupted - has also raised questions. 

The Caste bomb

Nitish Kumar has been famous for his unpredictability. In 2013, he broke off his long standing alliance with the BJP on flimsy grounds. For equally frail reasons, he walked out of the "mahagathbandhan" in 2017. 

If he is now threatening to dump the BJP, his threat can hardly be taken lightly. The problem area for the BJP is this: That Kumar -in consultation with RJD's Tejaswi Yadav - could attempt to whip up a national campaign on the issue of caste census. Two resolutions favouring the ideal of a caste census for Bihar have already been passed by the state assembly. The chief minister is also in the process of convening an all-party meeting to discuss strategies to take forward the idea. 

The caste plank does have the potential to find resonance among Opposition leaders such as the DMK's MK Stalin, Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, TDP's Chandrababu Naidu or the TMC's Mamata Banerjee. 

A "forward versus backward" campaign does have the potential to drown out the BJP's Hindutva campaign in the run up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. 

But the questions are these: Will Kumar take the plunge in the turbulent waters of Opposition politics to reclaim his status as a stalwart socialist leader? Or, will he settle for the Mayawati model of surrender to the BJP?