Bihar Elections 2020
By DK Sinha
Patna: The Bharatiya Janata Party was always a junior partner to chief minister Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) but this Bihar election, it changed the gear to outsmart its senior partner, even it meant taking electoral risk.
The relationship between the BJP and the JD (U) was under cloud ever since the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Chirag Paswan launched an offensive against Nitish, allegedly at the behest of the BJP. The allegation only gained the firm ground when Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his election meetings did not name Chirag to distance BJP from his outbursts against Nitish. The Prime Minister was apparently relying more on Chirag’s ground report, prepared during his, ‘First Bihar First Bihari Yatra’, launched earlier this year. The BJP ostensibly did not take any firm step to dissuade Chirag from attacking Nitish, creating an impression that it was least bothered about the JD (U)’s annoyance over it.
Also read: With voting over, RJD banks on anti-incumbency factor against Nitish in Bihar
The JD (U) leaders are also clueless how the Income Tax department could conduct raids in the middle of elections against contractors associated with the state government’s Har Ghar Nal Ka Jal Yojana or piped water scheme. They are still unable to fathom whether the IT sleuths could conduct raids without the consent of their political bosses. All these created confusions among workers of the BJP and the JD (U), promoting them to even work against each other in the hustings.
It is indeed intriguing why the BJP did not contest the elections alone or with the LJP if it were really aware of so much anti-incumbency against Nitish. Did it miscalculate the situation despite Chirag’s briefing to top BJP leaders including Amit Shah and J P Nadda? Did it consider banking on Nitish’s so far well-nursed vote bank – Extremely Backward Classes and women – would remain loyal to the JDU? If it did so then it was perhaps a gross miscalculation and if reports have to be believed, even EBCs and women were not completely with Nitish. If the NDA loses in Bihar, which the exit polls are suggesting, then it may not any immediate impact on the the Rajya Sabha seat equation from Bihar, which has fallen vacant, following the death of Ram Vilas Paswan. The seat is still more likely to go to the BJP as it was vacated by Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad following his election to Lok Sabha in 2019 and was subsequently alloted to LJP to accommodate late Ram Vilas Paswan, who had not contested the last Lok Sabha election then.
Of course if exit polls are any indication, then BJP may end as the main opposition party post election. The question still remains that was it already preparing itself to take all risks till popularity of Narendra Modi is intact?
As many as 15 parties left the NDA between 2014 and 2019 and three quit the BJP-led alliance after Modi got a fresh mandate. According to a media report of Sanjay Kumar of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), the allies which left the NDA in its first term cost it 22 of the 336 seats it had won in 2014. In 2019, however, Modi brought the NDA back to power with 352 seats.
But a day before election result day, mood was upbeat in the Rashtriya Janata Dal camp today. The reason is exit polls forecast. If Tejashwi really gets a chance to rule Bihar, he will not only have to keep the promise of providing 10 lakh jobs but also check the crime graph, if he wants that ghost of jungle raj doesn’t haunt the people.
Tejashwi, however, has the advantage of learning so many lessons from his father and RJD chief Lalu Prasad as well as chief minister and JD (U) president Nitish Kumar. While Lalu had earned the notoriety of establishing Jungle Raj in Bihar, Nitish Kumar, who had so assiduously tried to make ‘sushashan‘ USP of his government ended up as a chief minister, who, his detractors now say, only promoted corruption and trumpeted the issue of development for his political exigency.
This election was BJP’s calculated move to jettison Nitish and Sushil (governor post?) as both are not hard Hindutva. Sweet payback time for Modi since the previous partnership days when Nitish called the shots.
Sushasan Babu should have used Laloo Prasad’s tactics in 1990-95 period — deftly swinging from Devi Lal to Chandrashekhar to RK Hegde to Jyoti Basu.
Chess, Chanakya and Chinese Sun Tzu have a common counterstrike gambit — unsettle the enemy.
Even Shakespeare said in Julius Caesar: “Keep your friends near, but keep your enemies nearer.”
Nitish Kumar would have done well to remember who was the actual enemy.
To my calculations N D A is forming Government