The contrast couldn’t be sharper. In Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had arrived at the BJP headquarters to thunderous applause on Friday evening. In Patna, the man at the heart of the NDA’s Bihar triumph, chief minister Nitish Kumar, hid himself from the public eye even on Saturday.

Poised to be sworn in as chief minister for a record tenth time unless he himself decides otherwise, Nitish spent the whole of Friday and Saturday in what seemed self-imposed seclusion.

He did not step out even to flash a brief V-sign before the expectant cameras, and his sprawling 1 Aney Marg bungalow was shrouded in a strange hush.

Several theories swirled about in the Patna smog.

Was Nitish staying off the celebrations in sombre deference to the pall that has descended just across the road on 10 Circular Road, home to his long-time comrade and sometime adversary Lalu Prasad?

10 Circular Road, the residence of Lalu Prasad and Rabri Devi, in Patna on Saturday.

The two veteran socialists, bound by five decades of rivalry, alliance, friendship and political rupture, live only a short walk apart.

Rabri Devi’s official residence, where Lalu stays, has been a study in despondency: the mood has been dark and the once crowded and boisterous lawns deserted since Friday. Security personnel have been lounging idly at the gates.

Strangely, Nitish Kumar’s residence too wore a forlorn air. Even after the scale of the victory became clear on Friday, the compound remained mostly still, the quiet broken only by the movement of the armed guards.

By Saturday morning, fresh billboards had appeared around the bungalow, as though to fill the void, with assertions of Nitish’s indispensability.

“Hamare Bihar ka ek hi star, har baar Nitish Kumar,” said one, proclaiming him as the lone and eternal star over Bihar. It featured a large portrait of the JDU leader and a noticeably smaller image of Modi.

Another was pithier: “Bihar ka matlab, Nitish Kumar (Bihar means Nitish Kumar).”

These had been preceded by “Tiger abhi zinda hai (The tiger is still alive)” posters a day before the counting.

A billboard on the approach road to Nitish Kumar's 1 Anney Marg residence. Picture by JP Yadav

Aney Marg’s tranquillity was briefly interrupted on Saturday morning when Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) chief Chirag Paswan drove in with his party colleagues to congratulate Nitish.

Chirag later released photographs of the meeting, though Nitish’s office maintained its studied silence.

“The NDA has registered a historic victory under the leadership of Nitish Kumar,” Chirag later told reporters.

He chided the Opposition for alleging differences between him and Nitish.

“The chief minister told me that he had voted for the ‘helicopter’ (LJP election symbol) in his hometown Bakhtiarpur and I told him that I had pressed the ‘arrow’ (JDU symbol) button at my place, Alauli. This shows how warm our relations are,” Chirag said.

Asked who would be chief minister, Chirag was unequivocal. “As the Union home minister has also said, and as the Constitution provides, the MLAs will elect their leader. As far as I am concerned, Nitish Kumar will once again become the chief minister,” he said.

Yet, amid the near-certainty of his return to the hot seat, the whispers continue about the toll that age has purportedly taken on Nitish Kumar’s mental sharpness.

The impromptu interactions with reporters and easy camaraderie with them that were once the chief minister’s hallmark have all but vanished over the past five years.

His trademark “janta darbars” — the weekly public hearings where he patiently listened to people’s grievances and issued instant directives — stopped more than three years ago.

“Nitishji has been in the grip of a tight caucus of select party leaders and bureaucrats for over five years now. They run the show and control who gets access to him,” said a JDU veteran who had stood with Nitish during his revolt against Lalu Prasad in the mid-1990s.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, he added quietly: “I once ran into Nitish at an event, and he didn’t recognise me.”

During this election campaign, Nitish had projected the image of a leader firmly in command, crisscrossing the state and addressing multiple rallies a day.

But there had been a striking change. The politician famed for his extempore oratory, who once spoke with a fluency that defined his public persona, now read out from prepared texts.

His speeches had a boring sameness: he attacked Lalu Prasad’s alleged nepotism, praised his own governance record, and paid homage to Modi.

The buzz in Patna’s corridors of power is that Nitish will indeed take oath as chief minister, with the date chosen to ensure Modi’s presence at the ceremony.

But the question on many minds is: How long will Nitish continue in the chair he has held, with only brief interruptions, for nearly two decades?

The JDU chief is known for switching sides to save his chair. But this time the mandate is so one-sided that he cannot garner the numbers if he joins hands with the Mahagathbandhan. Nitish is tied to the BJP this time, for good or worse.

Lalu family rift

A long-anticipated rift in Lalu Prasad’s family — the second within a year — spilled into the open on Saturday, adding a fresh layer of turmoil to an already bruising electoral defeat.

Rohini Acharya, Lalu’s Singapore-based daughter who had donated a kidney to him in 2022, publicly announced that she was quitting both politics and her family.

“I am quitting politics and I am disowning my family,” she declared on X.

Rohini, who had contested from the Saran Lok Sabha seat on an RJD ticket earlier this year and lost, pointed fingers at senior figures in brother and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav’s inner circle.

“That is what Sanjay Yadav and Rameez had asked me to do… and I’m taking all the blame,” she wrote, naming a powerful political aide to Tejashwi and another member of his coterie.

Later in the night, ANI quoted Rohini as saying: “I have no family. You can go and ask this to Sanjay Yadav, Rameez, and Tejashwi Yadav. They are the ones who threw me out of the family. They don’t want to take any responsibility... The whole nation is asking why the party failed like this. When you name Sanjay Yadav and Rameez, you are thrown out of the house, disgraced, abused, and even hit...”

The discord in the family had been on display during the campaign itself, with Lalu’s elder son Tej Pratap Yadav — expelled from the party and publicly disowned by Lalu earlier this year — contesting as a rebel.

Tej Pratap fielded candidates against the RJD from several constituencies.