Is it a coincidence that two leaders who had led from the front to halt Prime Minister Narendra Modi's juggernaut in 2015, are facing the music around the same time?
Just when Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is facing perhaps the biggest challenge of his political career, former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad was told by the Supreme Court on Monday (May 8) to undergo a trial in a criminal conspiracy case related to the fodder scam. It may be mentioned here that Kejriwal and Lalu had succeeded in defeating the BJP in the Assembly elections of their respective states – Delhi and Bihar – in the year 2015, the two only blots in Modi's post-2014 journey so far.
Now, while Kejriwal's slip in Delhi and the BJP's rising back to prominence in the state was evident from the results of the civic elections held there last month, all eyes will be on Bihar now to see how the script in the state's politics unfolds hereafter.
On the face of it, the latest development would mean little for the RJD supremo for he is already a convict (in one of the fodder scams) and is barred from contesting elections, but given the results in Bihar in the last Assembly election in which the RJD had finished as the largest party, the ground equations in the state's politics could see interesting transformations.
The RJD, which has been trying to see a political revival, will face the biggest blow as a result of the latest development. Lalu was in the middle of a process of handing over the baton to son Tejashwi Yadav, deputy chief minister of the Nitish Kumar government.
But with the glare of law falling again on the RJD supremo, the process of transition in the RJD could see a disruption. Even though Lalu's sons and eldest daughter Misa Bharti are established politicians today, they are yet to master the appeal that their father has and that could be a serious handicap.
Even Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, whose JD(U) doesn't have the numbers to run the government alone, will be feeling the heat. There will be pressure on him to take steps against the "criminal-politician nexus" after a channel aired an alleged conversation between Lalu and don-turned-politician Mohammad Shahbuddin.
BJP has already offered Nitish support if he dumps Lalu?
The BJP has already started fishing in the troubled water by reportedly offering support to Nitish if he dumped Lalu and also saying that Nitish is aware of the conversation and wanted to weaken Lalu so that the latter could not challenge his prime ministerial ambitions in 2019. If the BJP, which had faced a humiliating loss in the Assembly polls, succeeds in driving a wedge between the JD(U) and RJD and force an interim poll to only make Nitish return to the NDA's fold, then it will seriously weaken the anti-Modi platform ahead of the next general elections.
With Kejriwal falling in the eyes of the people after the implosion in the AAP, Lalu facing new challenges to his political career and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress attacked over chit-fund and bribery scams, the Opposition seems to be falling apart quickly.
Does the battle of 2019 have just an academic significance now?
