As Bihar heads for what is being billed as a mini-Lok Sabha election, with 49 constituencies going to the polls on Monday, the battle-lines are drawn. As the BJP-led NDA and the Nitish-Lalu-led grand alliance face off each other, casting other smaller alliances to the margins, the BJP no longer appears to have the edge it had a fortnight ago, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared to be more popular across castes and regions.
Now, the BJP-led alliance and the grand coalition are in a “neck-and-neck” fight, with many shifts in the pollscape.
Indeed, the long campaign has seen two watershed moments: the first came when RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat’s remarks on reservation were seized by Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad as signalling that the Modi government would end reservation based on castes. This triggered unease not just among the powerful OBCs like the Yadavs but also among the EBCs, who were veering towards the BJP.
The second came after the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri. Mr. Yadav accused the BJP of communalising the issue and said some Hindus too ate beef. The BJP jumped in, hoping this would defend the Yadavs who traditionally rear cattle. Mr. Modi, too, in recent speeches in Bihar, plunged into the beef debate, lashing out at Mr. Yadav for “insulting the Yadavs for saying that they, too, eat meat.”
A key element in the BJP’s strategy has been to position Mr. Modi’s promise of “good governance” against Mr. Lalu Prasad’s “jungle raj”, hoping that by doing so, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, whose popularity remains undiminished, would recede into the background. But this has not happened, and Mr Kumar has begun, according to RSS sources, to look like a dignified statesman: his choice of words and conduct has, they say, placed him above the fray.
BJP erred in targeting Lalu Prasad
The BJP’s targeting of RJD chief Lalu Prasad as a “tainted” leader has not gone down well with his caste. In last year’s Lok Sabha polls, a sizeable chunk of young Yadavs voted for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but this time the BJP’s big push has not failed to dent the Yadav votebank. The community has consolidated around the RJD leader.
The daily references to Mr. Prasad’s “jungle raj”, calling him a chara-chor (fodder thief) and “Big Boss” appears to have boomeranged: it has not just united the Yadavs, it has also made them “aggressive against the BJP.” “Who has given the right to these two non-resident Biharis [Mr. Modi and BJP president Amit Shah] to constantly call our leader, and his regime jungle raj? It’s all a thing of the past: we’ll vote for Mr. Prasad more aggressively this time”, said Rajdeo Yadav in the Dinara assembly constituency in Rohtas district.
Earlier, travelling through Bihar’s Yadavland Madhepura, and the neighbouring Saharsa district, The Hindu heard similar sentiments. “We will all vote for our leader Mr. Prasad... We are not electing a PM but a CM: people from outside the State can’t decide whom we should vote for,” said young Sanjay Yadav of Singheshwar in Madhepura. An employee in a multi-national software company in Noida, Sanjay and his friends had voted for Mr. Modi in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. This time, the targeting of Mr. Lalu Yadav by BJP leaders, especially Mr. Shah and Mr. Modi, has upset them. Jan Adhikar Party leader and expelled RJD MP Pappu Yadav, too, has failed to help the BJP or his own “third front”. “He has some nuisance value but cannot do much as we’ve decided to support Mr. Prasad this time,” said Surendra Yadav, while his young friend, Sachindranath Yadav added: “We’ll not repeat our past mistake this time.”
Similarly, the BJP’s strategy to carpet-bomb Bihar with election meetings addressed by Mr. Modi has not helped. “He has been the BJP’s most powerful weapon but the BJP exhausted it at every block, nook and cranny of the State,” quipped a NDA leader in Sasaram. Across the state, the faces of two BJP leaders dominate the hoardings and billboards: of the Prime Minister and the BJP president. “Not a single Bihar BJP leader gets a place on the billboards. People are now discussing who they are from Gujarat to govern us,” said Ravindra Kumar in Bhagalpur.
“Mr. Modi is campaigning in Bihar like a block-level leader, even his texts are too local…it has not gone down well for the party in the last 15 days,” said Rajat Prakash, a poll observer in Gaya. “Now, the Bihar poll has changed its course and become a tight caste fight between the contesting blocks,” he added.
