In a political career spanning 50 years, Nitish Kumar has displayed an uncanny knack for rising like a Phoenix every time sceptics and detractors have sought to write him off.
The most atypical of politicians owing their rise to post-Mandal politics, Nitish Kumar stood out for his ability to address the governance deficit, unlike a majority of the breed reared in the socialist stable, but was often accused of pursuing politics of opportunism.
Call it political opportunism or sagacity, his moves, in effect, have not allowed the BJP to appoint its own chief minister to date, despite enjoying a near hegemonic status nationally and the best performance in recently held assembly polls where the saffron party bagged 89 seats, followed by the JD(U) with 85.
Kumar is among the 10 longest-serving CMs in the country. He has been in power for 19 years.
His frequent switching sides in his political career earned him the nickname 'Paltu Ram', whereas he is also called 'sushashan babu' for good governance.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, his JD(U) outperformed the BJP in terms of strike rate, winning as many seats despite contesting one less than the saffron party, which now depends on the state ally for survival in power at the Centre, having fallen short of a majority.
An engineer by training who had taken an active part in the JP movement, Kumar spurned a job offer from the state electricity department and decided to take the political gamble, an oddity among educated youth in Bihar for whom the lure of "sarkaari naukri" remains undiminished.
Unlike Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan, his co-travellers during the movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan, electoral success eluded Kumar for long.
He got the first taste of victory, after three successive defeats, in the 1985 assembly polls when he won from Harnaut as a candidate of the Lok Dal.
Four years later, he entered the Lok Sabha from Barh even as fellow MP from Saran Lalu Prasad shifted to Bihar, taking over as the CM and scripting a spectacular success story.
The next decade and a half saw Prasad's rise as one of the most powerful but controversial figures of his time, who ruled the state by proxy, getting his demure homemaker wife Rabri Devi elected as his successor, when a charge sheet in the fodder scam caused him to step down as the CM.
During the same period, Kumar burnt his bridges with Prasad, floated the Samata Party, and built his own political edifice brick by brick.
The Samata Party joined forces with the BJP, and Kumar made a mark for himself as an outstanding parliamentarian.
After a rift between Sharad Yadav, the then Janata Dal president, and Lalu Prasad, the latter broke away and formed the RJD. The Samata Party merged with Sharad Yadav's Janata Dal while continuing its alliance with the BJP.
After the NDA lost power in 2004, a victory in Bihar held out the promise of a degree of redemption for the BJP-led alliance.
Attempts to wrest power from the RJD-Congress combine, then in power at the Centre as well, after the NDA fell short of a majority in the assembly polls of February 2005, were stymied by Governor Buta Singh's controversial move to dissolve the assembly, without it having even been constituted, in the face of alleged horse trading.
This proved a blessing in disguise for Kumar, who was projected as the chief ministerial candidate in the elections that took place nine months later, and the JD(U)-BJP combine got a comfortable majority, bringing the so-called "Lalu era" to an end.
Kumar's first five years as CM are recalled with admiration even by critics, marked as these were by vast improvement in law and order.
Realising fully well that, unlike Lalu, he did not have the advantage of belonging to a populous caste group, Kumar created sub-quotas among OBCs and Dalits who were called "Ati Pichhda" (EBC) and "Mahadalits".
He also brought in measures like free bicycles and school uniforms for school-going girls, which won him much adulation, and saw him return to power in 2010, leading the JD(U)-BJP coalition to a landslide victory in the assembly polls.
He ultimately snapped his party's 17-year-old ties with the BJP in 2013 when Modi was anointed BJP's campaign committee chief for the 2014 LS polls.
After parting ways with the BJP, he won a trust vote with Congress' support, but stepped down in 2014, owning moral responsibility for the JD(U)'s drubbing in the LS elections.
In less than a year, he was back as the CM, elbowing out his rebellious protege Jitan Ram Manjhi with support from the RJD and Congress.
The Grand Alliance that came into being with the JD(U), Congress and RJD coming together, won the 2017 assembly polls but came apart in just two years, after Kumar insisted that Lalu's son and deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav, whose name had cropped up in a money laundering case related to the time when RJD supremo was the railway minister, "come clear" on the issue.
He abruptly resigned as the CM as the RJD refused to budge, only to be back in office in less than 24 hours with BJP's support.
His acceptability in political camps on either side of the ideological divide was on display when he dumped the BJP in 2022, accusing it of having tried to "break" the JD(U), and, while surviving in power with RJD, Congress, and Left as new allies, cobbled together a new front that was to be known as the INDIA bloc.
True to form, he jettisoned the anti-BJP front when he felt it was not giving him the respect that was his due, only to be welcomed back into the NDA with open arms.
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