Bihar Assembly Election 2020: Nitish Kumar faces tough fight for 7th term
Date: 05/11/2020
He fought and won six consecutive Lok Sabha polls but as chief minister, has never been elected through a well-liked vote. Bihar’s Nitish Kumar, seeking another mandate for his Janata Dal (United)-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance within the ongoing state elections, may be a member of the Bihar legislature , or Upper house of the bicameral legislature.
Bihar is among the six Indian states that have both lower and upper chambers just like the Lok Sabha and therefore the Rajya Sabha of Parliament.
In fact, Kumar contested his first assembly election in 1977 as a candidate of the erstwhile Janata Dal from the Harnaut constituency but lost the election. After a niche of nine years, he contested the seat again in 1985 and won.
To be sure, Nitish Kumar isn't the lone chief minister who opted for the Upper house route. Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath too are members of the legislative councils of their states.
A senior JD (U) functionary said that keeping in sight his larger responsibilities as party chief and head of the government during assembly elections, Nitish Kumar stays faraway from contesting a seat. “He is that the face of the JD (U) and therefore the Bihar government. within the elections, he has got to campaign across the state. If he contests from a specific seat, he has got to invariably spend longer on his own seat. For the larger gain of JD (U), he refrains from contesting polls,” said the leader, who requested anonymity.
His party colleagues argue that Kumar’s mass appeal is underlined by the very fact that he won six Lok Sabha elections from 1989 (9th Lok Sabha) to 2004 (14th Lok Sabha) before he returned to steer the Bihar government in 2005.
At the national level, too, there are a couple of samples of Prime Ministers occupying seats within the Rajya Sabha. While former PM Dr Manmohan Singh had right along been a Rajya Sabha member (he lost from south Delhi during a Lok Sabha election), his predecessor IK Gujral was PM as a member of the Upper house. Long ago, when Gandhi became the PM for the primary time, she too was a Rajya Sabha member.
Many Lok Sabha and assembly members have claimed that elections to the lower house are more politically significant because they involve direct elections by the people. But over time, it's become clear that members of the Upper house wield the maximum amount political authority and clout. Even within the current government, two senior ministers, Nirmala Sitharaman and S Jaishankar are members of the Rajya Sabha.
Nitish Kumar has been re-elected twice to the legislature , a record for a CM.
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