In Bihar 2017 was full of political ups and downs hitting one and hurting others. The clash between political titans left some battered and some isolated. Both factions, not prepared to greet each other on the new year, are only praying to bounce back and emerge more powerful.
The year 2017 began with a pat by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for imposing total prohibition policy in Bihar when the two were not on the same page and ended with bitter spat between Nitish and RJD supremo lalu Prasad and his family.
The year also started with strained relationship between the two ruling parties JD(U) and RJD and came to end with the arrest of lalu. In between the relations between the two parties turned so bitter that the alliance broke with Nitish led JD(U) shaking hands with the BJP in a dramatic manner and forming NDA Government in Bihar.
Nitish had started sending message that he was trying to undo what he did in mid of 2013, breaking alliance with the BJP, by supporting almost all the major policy decisions of the Modi Government and supported demonetization, GST, surgical strike and BJP’s presidential candidate Ramnath Kovind, then Bihar Governor, over Congress’s Meira Kumar.
The year was full of political upheavals which saw the reunion between BJP and JD(U) after a gap of nearly four years and end of the new found relations between friends-turned-foes-turned-friends lalu and Nitish who had embraced each other following their humiliating defeat in 2014 lok Sabha polls and that had forced the two rivals to form an anti-BJP alliance involving Congress and winning handsomely the Assembly election in late 2015. But this Grand alliance Government never functioned smoothly with the allies seeing each other with suspicion.
Eventually in July this year Nitish decided to break alliance after a series of corruption cases were highlighted by BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi against lalu’s younger son and CM Nitish’s deputy Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and the CBI filed FIR against him.
The day Nitish formally entered into realignment with the BJP and formed NDA Government, RJD and its leaders turned his enemy number one. On the other hand the central agencies like CBI, Income Tax and Enforcement Directorate tightened their grips on lalu’s kin including his wife Rabri Devi, both sons Tejashwi and Tej Pratap, daughter Misa Bharti, MP, and her husband Shailesh Kumar and two other daughters, grilled a few of them in Patna and Delhi and seized several named and benami properties of the family in Bihar and Delhi worth several crores.
Nitish also went hammer and tongs against his critics in the JD(U). He removed Sharad Yadav as leader of the party in Rajya Sabha and moved for the termination of the membership of the Upper House of Yadav and Ali Anwar Ansari. By the end of the year membership of both Yadav and Ansari was terminated by the Rajya Sabha chairman M Venkaiah Naidu and the claim of Yadav over the symbol of JD(U) was turned down by the Election Commission.
But the Nitish led NDA Government too faced some embarrassing situations when a series of scams surfaced like Srijan scandal in Bhagalpur and toilet scam in Patna.
However, the biggest shock rocked lalu and his party RJD when he was convicted in second fodder scam by the CBI court in Ranchi in the last week of the year and the quantum of punishment would be announced with the beginning of the year 2018.
At least one person for whom 2018 will be really Happy New Year is octogenarian politician and former CM is Jagannath Mishra who has been acquitted by the same CBI court in Ranchi in the same fodder scam case. Mishra, like lalu, too is on bail after being convicted in one case in 2013.