SuMo is the most underrated leader in the acronym-obsessed BJP. Overlooked for a Rajya Sabha seat in 2015 following the BJP’s defeat in Bihar, Sushil Modi was relegated to the membership of the state legislative council. But that did not stop him from leading the Lalu expose.
His single-minded effort to expose the RJD chief and his family’s alleged dubious land deals have brought the BJP back to relevance after the Bihar assembly election debacle in 2015.
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In April this year, a day after Sushil Modi alleged that Lalu and his family owned benami property worth Rs 950 crore, the RJD chief admitted that his family held stakes in a Rs 750-crore project to build Patna’s biggest mall.
Sushil Modi’s expose has been the downfall of the Mahagatbandhan, thought to have been the blueprint for the Opposition to take on the Modi wave.
Known to be a determined, assertive leader, Sushil Modi came into prominence in 2005 when his rise to power as Nitish’s deputy led to infighting within his party, the BJP. The perception that he was on the same page as Nitish – on keeping Narendra Modi away from campaigning in Bihar in the aftermath of the 2002 riots – won him no favours from his party colleagues.
The Nitish-Sushil Partnership
On 27 July, Sushil Modi took oath as the deputy Chief Minister of Bihar. This is the third time that he will be serving under Nitish.
In fact he’s always been viewed as Nitish’s man; he’s even been mocked for playing ‘second fiddle’ to him. The two share a bonhomie that can be traced back to the mid-1970s when, along with Lalu, they mobilised the students movement against the Emergency under Jayaprakash Nayaran’s leadership.
His college-time ideological frame had its setting in the 1962 India-China war when he enlisted with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh at the age of 10. At 16, he became a full-time Vistarak (worker) – against the wishes of his business-oriented Marwari family.
Arrested five times during the Emergency, he was a prime candidate for success within the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). Here, he rose to the ranks of All India General Secretary. Despite his turbulent albeit successful political career, he managed to bag the second rank in Botany at the Patna University.
Short Political Hiatus
In 1987, Sushil Modi took a short break from politics following his marriage to Jessie George, a Roman Catholic from Mumbai, preferring to stay in the sidelines. He began his own business – a computer training institute – with his wife, where they trained students in basic computer language.
But things changed in 1990, when the BJP decided to field him from the Central Patna seat, a Congress stronghold in the state elections. "Business was never my cup of tea. I was restless because I was away from my social life," he told India Today in an interview.
In 1990, Sushil Modi fought and won his first election to the Bihar legislative assembly from Central Patna. He won with a narrow margin of a little over 3,000 votes. That margin widened in successive elections (1995, 2000), making Central Patna the BJP stronghold it is today.
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