Nitish appeal, Oppn campaign against SIR, PK factor await popular verdict
New Delhi: Bihar elections are likely to settle the debate on whether the Opposition has finally found a potent political plank in its protest against SIR or it will be another non-starter for the alliance, as the ruling NDA looks to maintain its firm grip on a state which has stood by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar since 2005.
However, questions about his health have persisted and a popular verdict will clear the air on whether the JD(U) president continues to endure as the talismanic helmsman in the state’s electoral battle or Tejashwi Yadav as the de facto face of the Opposition can trump the chief minister, a feat that eluded his charismatic father, Lalu Prasad Yadav.
Kumar leads a coalition, which includes a BJP more formidable than ever in the state, with a proven numerical advantage over the RJD-led combine that has the Congress and the Left as allies.
The two alliances -- the NDA and Mahagathbandhan -- have fortified their coalitions with new allies for the Assembly election in which poll strategist-turned politician Prashant Kishor has emerged as the X factor with his assiduous campaign projecting his Jan Suraaj Party as an alternative to the traditional alliances.
The verdict will also be seen as a referendum on the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Review of electoral rolls in the state, an exercise which drew an energetic protest campaign from Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and backing from several regional satraps aligned with the main Opposition party.
Whether the campaign against SIR, which the EC plans to roll out across the country, will be a boost to the Opposition or turn out to be a futile exercise unsupported by popular opinion, as believed by the ruling alliance, will be decided by the polls.
Gandhi had led a two-week-long “Voter Adhikar Yatra” in the state between August 17 and September 1, but the jury remains out if his charges against the EC of “vote chori” in alleged collusion with the ruling alliance have found an echo outside the Opposition’s support base.
The BJP-led NDA has maintained that the SIR is aimed at weeding out infiltrators, and the Opposition’s campaign against it is driven by vote bank politics.
The RJD is the principal force in the Opposition and the BJP is seen to have emerged as the strongest NDA constituent in Bihar ahead of the Janata Dal (United), but both coalitions are beset with their own challenges.
Despite enjoying solid support from two biggest voting blocs, Muslims and Yadavs, the RJD-led coalition has been unable to draw enough support from other communities to turn the tide, with the BJP-JD(U) coalition being successful in reminding them of the perceived misrule during the RJD’s government between 1990 and 2005 and the “good governance” of Kumar since to ensure continued popular support for him.
Except in 2015, when Kumar had joined hands with Lalu Prasad Yadav-led RJD, he has fought all Assembly polls as part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
Tejashwi Yadav has been trying to expand his coalition’s social footprint, and the alliance is likely to give poll tickets to a large number of candidates from Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs), which hold the balance of power and have more often than not backed the NDA, to ensure his party’s return to power as the head of an alliance after 20 years.
Union minister Chirag Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), which had walked out of the NDA in the 2020 Assembly polls and successfully damaged
the JD(U)’s prospects in nearly three dozen seats, is now part of the ruling alliance, and so is former minister Upendra Kushwaha.
Kushwaha was heading another front that included Mayawati’s BSP and Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM.
The NDA had pipped the RJD-Left-Congress combine to a majority in the 243-member Assembly in 2020, with 125 seats against the rival’s 110. Closer still was the vote gap as the NDA bagged 37.26 per cent votes against the mahagathbandhan’s 37.23 per cent.
