Nitish isolated

Sir — This refers to the editorial, “Isolated, staring at defeat” (February 15). Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar must be repenting his decision of snapping ties with the NDA, in whose Government he had served as a Union Minister, over the issue of Mr Narendra Modi. All opinion surveys have been predicting the surge of the BJP with Mr Modi as the prime ministerial candidate, and the decimation of Mr Nitish Kumar’s party in Bihar. 

The Bihar Chief Minister miscalculated that severing ties with the NDA will fetch him the ‘secular’ minority votes and thus provide him maximum number of lok Sabha seats from Bihar. This move will boomerang. 

On the other hand, Mr Nitish Kumar had also presumed that in this way he’d be able to associate with the Congress. But Mr lalu Prasad and Mr Ram Vilas Paswan have almost tied up with the Congress, pre-empting the JD(U). 

Mr Nitish Kumar, now bereft of any idea, is in a catch-22 position. It is being said that he will join the Third Front, whose shape, composition and size are still not clear, although the lok Sabha election is just three months away. 

This ‘third front’ idea crops up every time an election is round the corner and dies thereafter. The front has no clear leader, vision, policy or programme to bring the country out of the mess.