India, March 6 -- When Nitish Kumar took oath as Bihar chief minister (CM) for the 10th time on November 20, 2025, he set a record for being sworn in to the office for the most number of times. By filing his nomination for the Rajya Sabha on Thursday, Nitish has tendered his de facto resignation as CM, making his 10th term the shortest in office when his alliance had a clear majority. An official declaration is still awaited, but it is widely expected that the new CM in Bihar will be from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the biggest constituent of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) legislative group in the state assembly and the national political hegemon. What is one to make of this transition? If one were to cast aside history, it makes perfect sense. The senior partner always heads an alliance. Nitish himself, has been keeping indifferent health for quite some time. There is nobody in his party who can claim to have his political acumen, authority or popularity. Unlike most of his regional party peers, he never made the Janata Dal (United) a dynastic enterprise, although there is now speculation that his son might enter the party, perhaps even be named deputy chief minister. If Nishant Kumar indeed enters politics, he will have to cultivate his own political capital. As far as the state's governance is concerned, things should not change much. The BJP and JD(U) have been in coalition for an overwhelming majority of the 20-plus years Nitish has been CM. The BJP already held most of the key portfolios in the current ministry. Nitish's influence in the latest government was largely ceremonial. The NDA under Nitish deserves credit for bringing Bihar's economy and governance back on track from the recklessness (under the pretext of social justice) during Lalu Prasad and his party's regime. To be sure, the state is still among the poorest in the country. The bigger ripples of Nitish's purge - whether inflicted or self-inflicted - will be felt in the realm of Indian polity's ideological fault lines. Bihar was India's last state where politics was still a bout between competing socialist strands. Not anymore. Now it's a match between Hindutva with a bunch of satellite socialists versus an emaciated socialist party in RJD, which has allies from the even more irrelevant Congress and communists. With Bihar conquered, only West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Jammu and Kashmir, among the large states, remain outside the BJP's orbit. Three of these states will go to polls in about a month or so....