Nitish Kumar

Nitish Kumar (born 1 March 1951) is an Indian politician who has been serving as the chief minister of Bihar since 2015, having previously held the office from 2005 to 2014 and for a short period in 2000. He is Bihar's longest serving chief minister whilst also holding the post for his 9th term.

He is the leader of the Janata Dal (United). Previously, Kumar also served as a Union Minister as the Samata Party member. He was member of the Samata Party until 2005 and Janata Dal from 1989 to 1994. Kumar first entered politics as a member of the Janata Dal, becoming an MLA in 1985. A socialist, Kumar founded the Samata Party in 1994 along with George Fernandes. In 1996 he was elected to the Lok Sabha, and served as a Union Minister in the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, with his party joining the National Democratic Alliance. In 2003 his party merged into the Janata Dal (United), and Kumar became its leader. In 2005, the NDA won a majority in the Bihar Legislative Assembly, and Kumar became chief minister heading a coalition with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In the 2010 state elections, the governing coalition won re-election in a landslide. In June 2013, Kumar broke with the BJP after Narendra Modi was named as their candidate for prime minister, and formed the Mahagathbandhan, a coalition with the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Indian National Congress and joined in United Progressive Alliance. On 17 May 2014, Kumar resigned as chief minister after the party suffered severe losses in the 2014 Indian general election, and was replaced by Jitan Ram Manjhi. However, he attempted to return as chief minister in February 2015, sparking a political crisis that eventually saw Manjhi resign and Kumar become chief minister again. Later that year, the Mahagathbandhan won a large majority in the state elections. In 2017, Kumar broke with the RJD over corruption allegations and returned to the NDA, leading another coalition with the BJP; at the 2020 state elections his government was narrowly reelected. In August 2022, Kumar left the NDA, rejoining the Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) and UPA. In January 2024, Kumar left the Mahagathbandhan once again and rejoined the NDA.

Kumar was born on 1 March 1951 in Bakhtiarpur, Bihar, to his mother Parmeshwari Devi and his father Kaviraj Ram Lakhan Singh, an ayurvedic practitioner. Nitish belongs to Kurmi agricultural caste. His nickname is 'Munna'. His native village is Kalyan Bigha, situated in the Nalanda district.

He has earned a degree in Electrical Engineering from Bihar College of Engineering (now NIT Patna) in 1972. He joined the Bihar State Electricity Board, half-heartedly, and later moved into politics. He married Manju Kumari Sinha (1955–2007) on 22 February 1973 and the couple has one son. Manju Sinha died in New Delhi on 14 May 2007 due to pneumonia.

Kumar belongs to a socialist class of politicians. During his early years as a politician he was associated with Ram Manohar Lohia, S. N. Sinha, Karpuri Thakur, and V. P. Singh. Kumar participated in Jayaprakash Narayan's movement between 1974 and 1977 and joined the Janata party headed by Satyendra Narain Sinha. Unlike Lalu Prasad Yadav, who is considered as a crowd puller, Kumar is considered as a deft communicator.

Kumar fought and first time won his election to the state assembly from Harnaut in 1985. In the initial years, Lalu Prasad Yadav was backed by Kumar as leader of the opposition in Bihar Assembly in the year 1989 but Kumar later switched his loyalty to BJP in 1996, after winning his first Lok Sabha seat from Barh.

The Janata Dal had survived the splits in past when leaders like Kumar and George Fernandes defected to form the Samata Party in 1994, but it remained a baseless party after the decision of Lalu Prasad Yadav to form Rashtriya Janata Dal in 1997. The second split took place prior to Rabri Devi assuming power which resulted in Janata Dal having only two leaders of any consequence in it, namely Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan. Paswan was regarded as the rising leader of Dalits and had the credit of winning his elections with unprecedented margins. His popularity reached to the national level when he was awarded the post of Minister of Railways in the United Front government in 1996 and was subsequently made the leader of Lok Sabha. His outreach was witnessed in the western Uttar Pradesh too, when his followers organised an impressive rally at the behest of a newly floated organisation called Dalit Panthers.