Will Nitish Kumar’s Heir Finally Take The Plunge?

On 12 February 2025, a poster in Patna, Bihar’s capital, caused a sensation in state politics. It was placed by a Congressman named Ravi Kumar Golden, who claims his candidature for the Harnaut assembly constituency in Nalanda.

This seat is considered a bastion for Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)), which has held it for the last 20 years. Even before 2005, the Samata Party—co-founded by Nitish Kumar and former Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes—dominated here.

Golden tried to contest from Harnaut in 2020 but failed. This time, he is more optimistic but fears that Nitish Kumar could field his son, Nishant Kumar, from this seat. In a pre-emptive move, Golden laid out this poster in the area where offices of JD(U), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) are located.

The poster featured a dialogue from the movie *Super 30*: “Raja ka beta Raja nahi banega. Harnaut ki janata jisko chahegi wahi raja banega (King’s son will not become king. The one whom the people of Harnaut support will become the king).” Golden presented junior Kumar as the son of a king, while his photo contained an image of Rahul Gandhi adjacent to it.

JD(U) termed this stunt as preposterous, while Congress did not comment on Golden’s possible candidature or the nature of the poster. While the original purpose of the stunt seemed to be advertising Golden’s own candidature, it ended up reigniting discussions around junior Kumar joining politics.

Nishant Kumar: A Reluctant Heir to Nitish’s Legacy?

The 49-year-old Nishant Kumar is an alumnus of the Birla Institute of Technology, where he completed his software engineering degree. Right from the early days, Kumar took a conscious decision to stay away from politics or any kind of publicity coming to him because of his father being a star politician.

He spends his time reading books, listening to bhajans, and meditating. Even when he was inadvertently spotted in the market last year, Kumar was there to buy a speaker so that he could listen to the Hare Rama Hare Krishna bhajan more clearly.

His decision also aligned with Nitish Kumar’s image of being a principled politician who is not in politics for his family’s growth.

Ironically, it is this facet of the father-son duo that propels many leaders and political experts to keep speculating that sooner or later, Nishant will join politics and emerge as an heir to his father’s throne. Bihar’s power circle has seen sinusoidal waves of discussions around Nishant joining politics – it reaches a crest and then hits a trough for many years.

The crest is generally around election time. For instance, he was there to attend the oath-taking ceremony of his father in 2015, when Kumar formed the government in alliance with RJD and Congress. It was the first election in which Tejashwi Yadav, the son of RJD scion Lalu Yadav, had gathered appreciation.

Just a year earlier, Ram Vilas Paswan’s son, Chirag Paswan, also became a parliamentarian from the Jamui Lok Sabha constituency.

Both these developments fuelled talks of power transfer to the next generation of these socialist icons. JD(U) leader Shravan Kumar, considered close to Nitish Kumar and currently serving as Minister of Rural Development and Parliamentary Affairs in the Bihar Cabinet, had hinted that Nishant could join politics and that a decision about it would be taken at the appropriate time.

Nishant soon disappeared into the background while his father’s political fortunes started to show more inconsistent patterns, as his image of ‘Sushashan Babu (Man of Good Governance)’ was replaced by ‘Paltu Chacha (Disloyal Uncle)’. At the same time, Nitish did not leave ample space for the second generation of political leaders who could take charge after him.

In the backdrop, Paswan and Yadav slowly built a constituency of their own and are considered, by and large, established leaders – one (Yadav) in state politics and the other (Paswan) in central politics.

After 2015, the fuss around Nishant joining politics was seen in a very hushed manner. Months ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2025, his father Nitish Kumar left the Indian National Developmental Inclusive (INDI) Alliance to join the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The election was taken as a semi-final to the Bihar Assembly Elections (AE) in 2025.

Nitish’s weakness of not creating a second string of leaders was felt for the first time when he had to take the help of star NDA campaigners to steer JD(U)’s ship. Though the party won 12 out of 16 seats, within a span of six months, faces like Ashok Chaudhary, Vijay Chaudhary, Rajiv Ranjan Singh, and Sanjay Jha, among others, headlined JD(U)’s decision-making process.

Another leader, Manish Verma—a close aide of Nitish—was touted as Nitish’s successor, but his name could not draw consensus in the party, and Verma is now out of the scene.

The aforementioned four leaders are expected to handle the party’s negotiations with the BJP for the seat-sharing arrangement and other strategies. BJP is also expecting to get them on board for the possibility of JD(U)’s merger into BJP if and when Nitish Kumar leaves active politics.

Not everyone in JD(U) will be happy with the possibility of such a merger due to the likelihood that only a few leaders will get privileged positions while others will be sidelined.

Kumar stepping down is a big jolt to their prospects too. On an electoral level, the issue with Kumar stepping down is his almost unilateral control over the majority of Dalit voters in Bihar. Kumar brings these voters to whichever alliance he is in, so him jettisoning politics will leave around 75 per cent of Dalit votes (15 per cent of the population) open to all.

In politics, voters—especially Dalit voters—only want a like-for-like replacement, and truth be told, there is no one in JD(U) whose face is as recognisable as Nitish. Then there is the problem of the division of Kurmi-Kushwaha voters, who have already shown signs of separation during the Lok Sabha elections.

Rather than preparing individual leaders for different demographics, it is much better to pick someone who resembles Nitish Kumar—not just by bloodline but also by mannerisms. Soft stories of both the father-son duo having similar physical features, mental fortitude, and clean image are already being published.

For Nitish, the only possible hindrance is the idea of compromising his positions on nepotism. In the past, he has taken veiled digs at Chirag Paswan and Tejashwi Yadav for nepotism. In April 2024, he even said that instead of working for Bihar, Lalu Yadav produced only children.

However, it is also true that Nitish has ignored party leaders’ calls to bring his son into politics for decades. Effectively, Nishant has his own life outside politics and will be joining (if he does) in his 50s, which means that JD(U) will have a credible answer to allegations that Nishant chose politics because he did not know any other skill.

The talks of Nishant joining politics restarted around November 2024, when both Nitish and his administration were under constant attack. Increasing crime rates coupled with questions on Nitish’s mental fitness made it really difficult for the party to defend its stances.

On 15 November 2024, the father-son duo were together in public after a long time in Bhurthal village of Rewari district in Haryana. They were there to attend the marriage ceremony of the son of Paramveer Yadav, Nitish Kumar’s personal security officer. The public appearance reignited the discussion around Nishant joining politics.

Though Nishant did not comment on questions about him joining politics, he did ask people to vote for his father by saying, “If possible, please vote for my father and his party and give him a chance once again.”

The statement came in the backdrop of Nitish Kumar being involved in a tug-of-war with alliance partner BJP over the seat-sharing arrangement and the chief ministerial face in the Bihar AE 2025.

Ashok Chaudhary, one of the big four in JD(U), looked to welcome Nishant and said that there is nothing wrong in him joining politics, but the ultimate decision lies in the hands of Nitish Kumar.

Shravan Kumar also echoed the sentiment while praising Nishant for his good intent and knowledge of Bihar’s political and social landscape. Kumar asked to wait for a while until things took formal shape.

However, Neeraj Kumar, JD(U)’s spokesperson, dismissed any such possibility and said that such speculations are deliberately spread by Kumar’s rivals to defame him.

On the other hand, RJD said that it would welcome Nishant, but its leaders also took a sarcastic jab at Nitish Kumar regarding it. Its spokesperson, Shakti Singh Yadav, projected it as an indication of the decline of Nitish Kumar as a mass leader and said that it would be better if he hands the baton to Nishant.

Tejashwi Yadav also said that Nishant should join politics because Nitish Kumar is not well and expected that Nishant will restore JD(U)’s ideology as it is being hijacked by people not loyal to the ideas of Sharad Yadav – one of the founders of JD(U). Tejashwi termed Nishant as a simple man and asked him to struggle on the ground, claiming that he also did that.

RJD’s alliance partner Congress also looked in welcoming mode. Prem Chandra Mishra, a senior party leader and member of the legislative council, said that the country needs the force of youth.

Other parties also spoke in similar terms. Lok Janshakti Party Ram Vilas (LJP(RV)) parliamentarian from Khagaria, Rajesh Verma, said that Nishant Kumar should be welcomed into politics. Santosh Suman, chief of Hindustani Awam Morcha and son of Union Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, also echoed the sentiment.

BJP spokesperson Kuntal Krishna said that the party is ready to welcome Nishant, but the ultimate decision lies in the hands of JD(U).

Political Calculations: The Implications of Nishant’s Entry

Despite these welcoming gestures, every party active in the state is going to be impacted by Kumar’s arrival – the biggest of whom is BJP.

BJP has been playing second fiddle to Nitish Kumar and JD(U) since 2005. Kumar has helped it evade the perception of being a party of only upper-caste individuals. On Kumar’s back, the party built its diversified organisational strength but was never successful in cultivating a leader. The party has been waiting for Nitish’s departure for more than a decade.

Since JD(U) is not a strong organisation rooted in its core, BJP would provide it with organisational support, and hence a merger would be on the cards when Nitish Kumar retires. In the last six months, BJP has even begun preparing Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Chaudhary for the leadership position.

If Nishant is parachuted into politics, Chaudhary would not be too happy with the decision. Samrat has only the Koeri-Kurmi vote bank to claim, while Nishant will inherit his father’s voting bloc of Koeri-Kurmi as well as Dalits.

For the BJP, there are only two options.

Firstly, it negotiates with JD(U) for a merger, offering that Nishant Kumar will become its chief minister, while its own leaders will effectively be in charge. Nishant, being a religious man, will also go hand-in-hand with the party’s core ideology.

The second option is explaining to JD(U) that due to his lack of administrative experience, Nishant does not have the necessary expertise and that he could learn by becoming deputy chief minister under Samrat Chaudhary. It will help the party buy some time to convince those JD(U) leaders who are not ready for a merger.

LJP(RV) is another party about which rumours of a merger with BJP keep floating. It is believed that in case of a merger, Chirag Paswan would like the Chief Ministership, about which BJP cadre and local leadership are not fully on board. Until Nitish Kumar is in charge, such talks won’t happen.

However, since Nishant will be a weaker prospect than Nitish for the chief minister’s post, BJP might well begin such talks, but for that, it has to sort out its arrangement with JD(U). On his part, Chirag has already expressed his desire to play a key role in state politics.

Additionally, LJP(RV)’s plans of expanding beyond Pasi to other Dalit castes have been hindered by Nitish Kumar’s hold on them. Nishant’s entry will ensure that the road ahead continues to be difficult. The same holds true for Jitan Ram Manjhi and his HAM – which wants to expand beyond the Musahar caste.

For the opposition, Nishant Kumar’s entry is less important than the factors – Nitish Kumar’s departure and a weakened JD(U) unable to replace him with a second line of leaders – behind it.

While Tejashwi Yadav and Congress have an opportunity to seize, the seizure of social justice vote banks and poor upper-caste votes will become more difficult with Nishant’s entry.