BJP's allies are left out

The BJP’s NDA partners didn’t get a look in Sunday when Prime Minister Narendra Modi expanded the Union council of ministers. If the exercise was meant as a preparation for the next Lok Sabha polls, the BJP’s partners may well wonder if the saffron party intends to go into the election without an alliance with them. The question is specially likely to arise inside the Shiv Sena and JD(U), the regional party from Bihar that recently returned to the NDA fold after ditching the Mahagathbandhan with Lalu Yadav’s RJD and the Congress.

The Shiv Sena’s grouse is nothing new. It was overlooked in last year’s reshuffle too. So its spokesman angrily said the NDA was “dead”. This may well be a reflection of pique as the BJP and the Sena - one a Hindutva national party and the other a regional party of the same stripe - are often at loggerheads. It is the Bihar party that may be feeling quite foolish. Chief minister Nitish Kumar broke with his partners (whom he had acquired to burnish his so-called secular credentials) quite recently to return to partner the BJP, gave the BJP seats in his government, and hoped to have a small share of the pie in New Delhi. It’s the last that didn’t materialise. It’s obvious that Bihar’s JD(U) government will fall if the BJP withdraws support to it, but the reverse is not true at the Centre. Mr Kumar was playing at being equal partners without possessing sufficient firepower. Here’s a lesson for all of the BJP’s small and micro allies.