PATNA, March 6 -- With Nitish Kumar finally deciding to relinquish the chief minister's chair and move to the House of Elders (Rajya Sabha), it is the end of an era in Bihar, for he has been the difference between being in government and Opposition in Bihar for over two decades. Nitish himself posted on X the he wanted to go to the Rajya Sabha, the only House he has not been a member of. He has been a member of the Lok Sabha, Bihar Legislative Assembly and Bihar Legislative Council, and he had himself said in the past also that he had a desire to go to Rajya Sabha also. This also clears doubts about any kind of pressure from the BJP on Nitish Kumar, which has never been the case in the past. He has never been dictated by anyone. He himself made it clear that it was his decision, though he would continue his association with Bihar to take the development journey of the state forward. The post came just a couple of hours before the arrival of home minister Amit Shah to Patna and likely induction of his son Nishant Kumar into the JD(U) fold. He would resign in due course. Since 2005 November, it has been the Nitish government all through irrespective of who his party allied with, barring the nine-month period when he resigned owning moral responsibility after the 2014 Lok Sabha debacle for the JD(U) to hand over the reins to Jitan Ram Manjhi for a nine-month period. A smart leader who knew how to balance things out in the rough and tumble of politics with his deft manoeuvring, he came out with the government's 7-Resolves programme in 2015 with focus on quantifiable outcomes and to ensure that political compulsions did not come in the way of state's development. With the support base he and his party assiduously cultivated, with women and people from the so-called extreme backward classes or EBCs and the Lav-Kush combination, JD(U) under him emerged indispensable in the state's triangular politics and made coalition politics a reality not possible without him. His weight determined the government with Nitish as the undisputed leader. The 2020 assembly elections were different. Sabotaged by the Lok Janshakti Party, which continued to be part of the larger NDA grouping at the centre, the JD(U) saw its tally in the assembly shrink to 43, its lowest since 2005. This time, it won 85 seats at a strike rate of almost 85%, despite a muted campaign by Kumar himself, who keeps indifferent health. Still, partly on account of the spate of welfare schemes he announced ahead of the election -- many targeted at women -- and partly because of fears over what the NDA termed Jungle Raj (the RJD's rule between 1990 and 2005), and the good governance (Sushasan) his government had delivered, he remained front and centre of the NDA campaign. On ground, there was a palpable undercurrent of support for Bihar's 'Sushashan Babu'. The higher turnout of women voters --- 8.8 percentage points more than men; 71.6% of women voted as compared to 62.8% of men -- is directly attributed to the appeal Kumar enjoys among women, and the Rs.10,000 cash handout to 14.1 million women just ahead of the election. Kumar's constituency has been of his own making. "If women emerged as a big constituency favouring him despite the caste divide, it was a result of his government's consistent plans and policies since 2005," says analyst Prof NK Choudhary, who retired as head of economics department from Patna University. "If the cycle scheme gave wings to girls and created a craving for education despite questions over the quality of schools, the reservation of 50% in panchayati raj and urban local bodies empowered women by involving them in grassroots governance," he added. Kumar also launched the Jeevika self-help group for rural women to become economically self-reliant. Soon after taking over as chief minister in 2005, Kumar also set out to upgrade the state's poor infrastructure. DM Diwakar, the former director of AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna, rattles off the areas where Kumar made a difference: roads, power and law and order. That saw him voted back to power in 2010, and since then, he has continued to focus on infrastructure, and schemes aimed at bettering the lot of women or a generation of voters. He symbolised governance that was measurable, not mythical, say analysts. This year, in the run-up to elections, Kumar turned to welfarism, giving government jobs, hiking the monthly pension from Rs.400 to Rs.1,100 and giving Rs.10,000 under Mahila Rozgaar Yojana. His pre-polls direct transfers turned any anti-incumbency to pro-incumbency, Chaudhary claimed. Born in the small town of Bakhtiyarpur in 1951 in a middle-class family, Kumar was influenced by socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia and took the plunge into politics even though he was an engineering graduate. He entered Bihar assembly in 1985 and backed Lalu Prasad as Leader of Opposition in 1989. A year later, he supported Lalu Prasad's bid for CM . In 1994, the two fell out and in 1996, he aligned with the BJP . He was inducted as railway minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1998. On March 3, 2000, he became CM of Bihar for the first time by when he was already a four-time MP, but his term was short-lived, only for seven days, as he failed to prove his majority. He did not have the seven votes required to pass the trust vote on the floor of the assembly. He became the CM again in 2005 in alliance with the BJP and then onwards he never looked back. RJD's Lalu Prasad thwarted his CM's ambitions in 2000, though Kumar's then party, Samata Party, enjoyed the Vajpayee government's support. Prasad ensured his wife Rabri Devi would occupy 1 Anne Marg, the Bihar CM's official residence. He left the NDA fold twice, for four years between 2013 and 2017, and for two years between 2022 and 2024; although he remained chief minister and his supporters saw his frequent switches as political pragmatism. "Allies accepted his policies as theirs, as they were left with no option in his company. Nitish never had to do any alterations, nor did he allow his allies to run their agenda," said analyst Prof Vijay Kumar of BBA Bihar University, Muzaffarpur. In the last half a century, a few leaders in Indian politics have mastered the art of coalition management, caste arithmetic and symbolic politics as Kumar has . The 2025 elections showed why he is indispensable in Bihar politics. Two days before the first phase of voting on November 6, Kumar reminded voters through a four-minute video that he had served the people of Bihar with "honesty" and "transformed" the state from the point where the "world Bihari was an insult" to that of "pride". He also reminded people that his government's approach was inclusive and working for the development of all sections of society while doing nothing for his own family, a swipe at RJD chief Lalu Yadav. "Politically he may have been unpredictable, but no one dares individually targeting him for non-performance or lack of integrity despite corruption charges flying against some of his cabinet colleagues. That's the strength Nitish," Diwakar said. As Nitish Kumar embarks on what may well be the final stretch of his storied career, many within the NDA say it was in the offing due to CM's indifferent health and a broader understanding that he would himself pass on the baton to the BJP. The big challenge for the JD(U) now is to identify a successor to Kumar; its strong performance in this election -- 85 seats at a strike rate of 85% -- means it can do so from a position of strength, but the strong performance of the BJP and other constituents of the NDA means it needs to be done soon. How Nishant, a rookie in politics, is able to fit into now role and shoulder the responsibility will be a thing to watch, as that will be crucial to the future of personality-centric JD(U)....