The battle lines have been drawn in poll-bound Bihar in the last 48 hours. As of now, it’s advantage BJP but the complexion of the game might change when the pace quickens and voters queue up in six months to exercise their franchise.
Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh sounded the poll bugle on Tuesday at an election rally in Patna. The BJP is eyeing 185-plus seats in the 243-strong Bihar legislative assembly along with its NDA allies, Rashtriya Lok Samata Party and Lok Janshakti Party.
And on Wednesday, the competition too finally got its act together and floated the Samajwadi Janata Party which has no option but to hit the ground running in Bihar where it faces the mother of all electoral tests. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and former Bihar CM Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtryiya Janata Dal are among the six Janata Parivar parties which merged yesterday to form SJP under the leadership of Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The formation of the Janata Parivar may not help Nitish or Lalu. PTI image
At this juncture, the BJP-led NDA is no doubt in an advantageous position in Bihar because of two factors – anti-incumbency and caste arithmetic.
For 25 years, the state has been ruled by Nitish or Lalu. So Biharis might just like to try out the BJP. And there is every possibility of the JD(U)’s and RJD’s past impinging on their future. There are bound to be pent-up grievances and frustration awaiting expression. And the best time for settling scores in any democracy is during polling. A vote, after all, is like a silencer-fitted pistol.
Moreover, Other Backward Castes, accounting for a whopping 32 percent of the electorate, clearly have a weakness for the BJP. A report by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies revealed that in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, 50 percent of OBC succumbed to the BJP’s charms probably because Narendra Modi belongs to a OBC – a fact BJP went all out to propagate, with stunning results.
OBC were Nitish’s mainstay after he won them over through panchayat reservations. But now they seem to find the BJP irresistible – which could prove to be SJP’s undoing this year, particularly if more than 50 percent of OBC vote BJP.
Sadly for SJP, it forfeited the Maha-dalit vote no sooner Jitan Ram Majhi was evicted from chief ministership by Nitish. Jitan Ram belongs to the Maha-dalit community which accounts for 12 percent of the electorate. Jitan Ram has held several rounds of talks with BJP and RSS bosses. He is tipped to float a new outfit which will join the NDA substantially boosting its prospects by reaping the Maha-dalit vote en masse.
The BJP’s existing allies in Bihar – Ramvilas Paswan’s LJP and Upendra Kushwaha’s RLSP – anyway control five and four percent votes respectively belonging to Paswan and Koeri communities.
And the upper castes’ love affair with the BJP is too well known to bear repetition. They account for 13 percent of the votes in Bihar. Not only are they BJP’s time-tested loyalists, they don’t mind the BJP wooing OBCs, Maha-dalits, Paswans or Koeris! Their liberal approach gives the NDA a virtually unbeatable edge in the electoral battle ahead.
In contrast, SJP can take only the Muslim vote for granted. Comprising 16 percent of the electorate, Muslims will no doubt blindly vote for the SJP to keep the BJP at bay in Bihar. Similarly, the two main backward groups – Yadavs and Kurmis – accounting for 11 and 3.6 percent of the electorate respectively, are expected to vote overwhelmingly for SJP.
Another major plus point for SJP is that the BJP doesn’t have a chief ministerial candidate who can match Nitish. This is one of the BJP’s biggest drawbacks.
But SJP could have a new problem on its hands. In election after election, JD(U) or RJD fielded its own candidates. But this time SJP will field common candidates drawn from either of the two parties which have merged. This is bound to create heart-burn and fan dissension. Those who are denied a SJP ticket might contest as independents or cross over to the BJP.
The BJP too is facing a similar problem. It’s keen to contest around 200 seats out of 243 to achieve the 185-plus target. It plans to set aside only 43 seats for the RLSP and LJP. But the two are demanding 140 seats and want the BJP to contest no more than 103. These differences will be surely ironed out but the demand for tickets will test the BJP’s and SJP’s patience alike.
A huge handicap for the BJP is the lacklustre performance of Narendra Modi’s government since May 2014. Even those Biharis who whole-heartedly voted for the NDA in the Lok Sabha elections might switch sides out of sheer frustration.
The biggest imponderable of the Bihar elections is whether Lalu will relegate himself to playing second fiddle to Nitish. Is Lalu at all capable of accepting Nitish’s exalted position in the new order and acknowledging him as his boss?
If Lalu somehow keeps his ego in check and falls in line, half the battle is won. The other half, to be sure, is even more complicated!
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