‘Bihar Assembly poll outcome extremely unnatural’
New Delhi: Left parties on Friday termed the Bihar Assembly election results an “absolutely unnatural” outcome, which does not correspond to the ground reality of the state.
The ruling NDA decimated the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar to retain power, reaffirming Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s enduring appeal and dealing a body blow to the Congress and its ally RJD.
The massive scale of the victory of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) can be gauged from the fact that its two main constituents -- BJP and JD(U) -- are on course for an over 85 per cent strike rate in 101 seats each they had contested.
CPI(M) General Secretary M A Baby said the results were “quite unexpected” and stressed that the Opposition alliance needs to put in more united effort.
“Our assessment was that with the massive campaign we had carried out on misuse of the Election Commission, the unemployment situation in Bihar, and the lack of democratic governance, we were expecting a victory for the Mahagatbandhan. But now there is a real setback for the alliance,” he told news agency.
Baby accused the ruling NDA of having misused the state machinery, resorting to various manipulations, and deploying “huge amounts of money” to win the polls.
“The Bihar elections show that to defeat the BJP, Opposition parties must make a more united effort. The CPI(M) will examine in detail the other factors behind these results,” the leader said.
“There was a report that around a dozen constituencies were to see ‘friendly contests’ among parties of the Mahagatbandhan; that sent a wrong message to sections of people,” he pointed out.
Asked about the impact of the result on the alliance at a national level, the CPI(M) general secretary stressed it is important that a more unified image should be projected on behalf of the Opposition.
“Bihar setback definitely will have its impact, but we are seasoned political parties; we have had ups and downs in our political life. With patience and realisation of the objective reality in the country, we have to have proper preparations,” he added.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation’s General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya termed the results “unnatural”, and added that it has “the scars of SIR (special intensive revision of electoral rolls) all over it”.
CPI General Secretary D Raja advised the alliance to introspect while saying that the crowds at their campaign were huge.
“INDIA Bloc parties should do serious introspection on what happened. Because what we witnessed during the campaign was a different scene. People were gathering in all campaign meetings of the Mahagathbandhan. We could see a huge public response, young people of Bihar looking for a change,” Raja told news agency.
