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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  BJP gets a wake-up call in Bihar bypolls
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BJP gets a wake-up call in Bihar bypolls

Lalu Prasad indicates RJD, JD(U) alliance will continue in forthcoming assembly polls

Leaders from the three alliance parties have said the Bihar bypolls were a test case to assess the viability of taking their partnership to other states. Photo: PTI Premium
Leaders from the three alliance parties have said the Bihar bypolls were a test case to assess the viability of taking their partnership to other states. Photo: PTI

The newly minted alliance between former political rivals Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar won six of the 10 assembly byelections in Bihar, suggesting that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have a fight on its hands in the upcoming state elections.

Of the seats won by the alliance, four had been previously held by the BJP. Coming as they do in the backdrop of a poor performance in the bypolls in Uttarakhand, where it lost all the three seats, the reverses serve as a wake-up call to the BJP ahead of the next round of assembly elections.

It should also worry the BJP that two of its four wins in the bypolls were secured with narrow victory margins—in Banka, its candidate won by just 711 votes.

The BJP’s emphatic win in the April-May general elections, with its alliance winning 31 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, had forced a political recalibration in Bihar.

It led to the formation of the rainbow alliance of the Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Kumar-led Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), and the Congress party—the outcome of the bypolls is likely to give a boost to the alliance.

RJD won three out of the four seats it contested, JD(U) won two seats and the Congress one. With the RJD and the Congress offering outside support to the ruling JD(U) in the state, the bypoll results also bolster the floor strength of chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s government.

The alliance propped up by Kumar and Prasad—socialist leaders, former chief ministers and one-time bitter rivals—represented the broadest unity between non-BJP parties in a state where electoral prospects are heavily influenced by caste considerations.

The results of the bypolls, seen as an electoral test ahead of state polls due later this year in states including Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir, are likely to determine the scalability of the anti-BJP alliance to other states, including neighbouring Jharkhand; in the BJP, it may lead to a re-think over strategies ahead of the assembly elections.

“This is a good beginning for the alliance. While there would be many roadblocks...including seat sharing and chief ministerial candidate, they should use the next one year to try and consolidate before the state polls," said Sanjay Kumar, a political analyst from the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) said.

“For the BJP, it poses some serious challenges. If these three parties were contesting against each other, then the BJP was likely to sweep more than 200 seats in the state polls, but if this alliance continues then it is a tough road ahead for the BJP," he added.

There are 243 members in the Bihar legislative assembly, which is expected to head for polls towards the end of next year.

The RJD has always banked on a consolidation of the Muslim-Yadav vote whereas the JD(U) finds support from the backward classes, Muslims and, to an extent, urban voters. The two together, along with the Congress, can challenge the BJP, which counts on the support of the upper castes and the youth vote.

“The experiment we made through the tie-up proved successful. People have expressed their mind and mood in favour of it," Nitish Kumar told reporters in Patna, according to the Press Trust of India. “But, still in a short span of time the alliance has managed a good show in the bypolls that have taken place a little after the general election in which BJP had registered stupendous victory in Bihar," he said.

Kumar was the biggest political casualty of his erstwhile ally, BJP’s strong performance in the general elections. The party was routed in the elections, with its Lok Sabha tally falling to two from the previous count of 20 in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, when it was a BJP ally, forcing Kumar to take responsibility for the defeat and step down as chief minister.

On Monday, the BJP said it accepted the bypoll verdict and that it would “make amends" in the run-up to the state polls.

“We accept the verdict...," former deputy chief minister in Kumar’s cabinet and senior BJP leader, Sushil Kumar Modi, posted on the social networking site Twitter. “We will review, make amends & make all effort to win the final round."

Eight other assembly seats across three states, results for which were declared simultaneously on Monday, failed to bring much cheer for the BJP. In Karnataka, the ruling Congress won two out of the three seats, including Bellary (rural), leaving only one for the BJP.

In BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, the party won two out of three seats and in Punjab, BJP ally, the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal and the Congress party, won one seat each.

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Published: 25 Aug 2014, 10:27 AM IST
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