Race to save supremacy in Bihar elections

By Lalit Garg

Preparation of Bihar assembly elections are at a peak, the electoral environment is prevalent there now. Overall, this time the competition seems to be between JDU-BJP vs RJD-Congress-Communist. The NDA has cracked and the LJP has decided to compete as freelance elections without any support. This election taking place in such a difficult time is important from many perspectives. There is a possibility of politics of manipulation in front of the voters of Bihar more than the advanced prospects for the future. The special thing about these elections is that the opposition is making the issues and failures of the government as usual, but the ruling party is looking for a new pitch.

Another special thing is that; this time the trend of not paying attention to small parties is visible in both the election camps. Talking about the opposition coalition, parties like RLSP involved in it, raising the question of the Chief Minister candidate, had started saying that RJD youth leader Tejaswi Yadav does not fit in front of Nitish Kumar. But the RJD did not think it necessary to sit away with coalition partners and to have an opinion, far from paying attention to this question. Just made it clear from his side that the Chief Minister’s face will decide the largest party in the coalition.

Similarly, in the ruling NDA, Lok Janshakti Party leader Chirag Paswan is constantly attacking the Bihar government and Nitish Kumar, but the NDA leadership continues to ignore his statements. It is believed that LJP is trying to get more seats in synergy, but JDU and BJP argue that contesting more seats does not lead to more seats. In the last assembly election, the LJP could win just two seats by contesting 42 seats. Amidst these neglectful conditions, Chirag has decided to compete in the free elections, angry over not getting the seats he wanted. The LJP may fight friendly with the BJP in some seats, but it will field its candidates in all the seats where the JDU candidates will be. This rift in the NDA will not have a wide impact on the election results, but will definitely have some impact. This election, where prestige is a question for the BJP, is an opportunity for the opposition parties to prove themselves. Overall, these elections are going to be quite interesting.

The opposition coalition will be led by Shri Tejaswi Yadav, son of Shri Lalu Prasad Yadav; Tejaswi is also the leader of the opposition in the current assembly and has been the Deputy Chief Minister in the past. Except for a few months, the ruling coalition government has been running under the leadership of Nitish Babu for the last 15 years. If the voters of Bihar hand over power to them in these elections, then it will be considered a victory of their efficient governance with amazing success.

Nitish Babu has generally contested the elections by making the functioning of his government an issue, but this time there are many obstacles in making the Lalu regime i.e. Bihar’s alleged jungle raj is an issue. Naturally, NDA needs some emotional and effective issues in Bihar. It has also become necessary that Nitish Babu’s problems have increased slightly due to the way his regional partner LJP has decided to go alone in the elections. By the way, the power of this party is now being named in the state due to its founder Shri Ram Vilas Paswan not being very active in politics, Chirag’s political future is at stake.

Nitish Babu’s stature and dominance have fallen this time as the JDU and BJP have got equal number of seats in the ruling coalition. Thus Nitish Babu, being the regional party of the state, has lost the status of being the elder brother. The reason for this is believed to be strong anti-incumbency against his rule and the BJP wants to contest this election by putting forward the image of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. One such readymade issue is always available with the BJP as Hinduism but its Hinduism card in Bihar has not been able to run as much as other states even once. Nationalism goes on, as is evident from the impact of the Pulwama incident on the voters of Bihar during the last general election, but Hinduism does not work.

Due to neglect of local issues in the name of national issues, BJP has suffered heavy losses in the assembly elections of various states in the country. This time the same mistake is repeated, and then the BJP will suffer. However, the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput is being given a very emotional color by the ruling party and the opposition is unable to do anything except support it silently. For the first time in this order, regional identity has emerged as a major electoral issue in a Hindi-speaking state, although the extent to which it changes in votes is in the future.

It is not a big deal if we see the impact of the corona epidemic conditions on this election. The image of Nitish Babu, created as ‘Good Governance Babu’, has fallen drastically in the last five years and administrative inefficiency in the state has been in the news. The most important among them is the pathetic condition of migrant laborers of Bihar at the national level during the lockdown period arising from Corona. Due to this problem, the politics of Bihar is causing a breakdown of the caste equations. At the same time, the opposition grand alliance has tried to ensure that the casteism polarization is divided between the rich and the destitute, taking the Communist parties with them this time. Even though the Left parties have been given 29 seats. Whereas after independence, the Communist Party used to be the main opposition party in Bihar till 1962.

The Bharatiya Jana Sangh began to emerge in this state from 1967, but the credit of changing the political equation at present can be attributed to Corona and lockdown, which further increased the distance between rich and poor in Bihar. Bihar voters are more interested on the ground issues, they are considered to be the most intelligent voters, now it is not easy to cheat or mislead them. Therefore, in these elections new laws made for the agriculture sector can also remain a major issue and can play an important role in ensuring defeat and victory. From a political perspective, these elections will also be considered to determine the political direction of the country, because Bihar is also called the laboratory of politics of North India. Obviously, this will have an impact on national politics.

  This election is also more important for the BJP because it has had to face repeated defeats in the last various state assembly elections. Saffron rule over the entire country is now shrinking. The party won with great difficulty in Gujarat. Despite being the largest party in Karnataka, it could not form the government immediately. The party lost in Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand. They could not form the government alone in Haryana and lost power by winning in Maharashtra. Even in Delhi, their magic did not work. Such bad feelings boosted the morale of the opposition. Its message at the national level has been that BJP can be bothered by mixed strength and good strategy. This means that the public is no longer blindly supporting every issue of BJP. In such situations, the election of Bihar is a big challenge for the BJP.
Whether any coalition wins the Bihar elections, but development should be the guide at all levels, revealing new directions for resolving the problems of the people, this is the primary expectation of a strong democracy. Every party will have to make an effective effort to establish coordination between the honor and privacy of the country through its working style, so that the country can live with its identity and Bihar can get good governance.  

(Lalit Garg is a Journalist, columnist, writer and member of Rajbhasha samiti, Ministry of Home Affairs. He can be reached at lalitgarg11@gmail.com)