In the months that followed the BJP’s spectacular victory in last year’s general election, it rapidly won Haryana, Maharashtra (with some post-poll help from the Shiv Sena) and Jharkhand, while making political history when it became part of the ruling coalition in Jammu and Kashmir. And then early this year, the BJP crashed out of the Delhi Assembly polls, routed 3-67 by the Aam Aadmi Party. Suddenly, the BJP no longer looked invincible. An emboldened Opposition confronted the BJP with renewed vigour. The Congress-led campaign against the Modi government’s Land Bill began to gain traction in a rural India already in the grip of an agricultural crisis. And though inflation was down, prices of essential food items continued to climb. It is against this backdrop that the Bihar Assembly elections later this year need to be viewed. For the BJP, bruised by the results of the Delhi poll, it is an opportunity to reaffirm its political dominance; for the Opposition, it is the moment to develop the Delhi story into a possible comeback narrative. If the 2014 Lok Sabha poll saw the Congress being decimated nationally, it also resulted in both the ruling Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal being cast aside to the margins of politics in Bihar. For the two Janata Parivar parties, it seemed the end of the road.
In the years since they had broken off from the parent Janata Dal and gone their separate ways, their fortunes had see-sawed in successive general elections. Of undivided Bihar’s 54 Lok Sabha seats, the two together won 27 and 25 seats in 1998 and 1999 respectively. After Jharkhand was carved out in 2000, in a shrunken Bihar they managed 28 (in 2004) and 24 (in 2009). In all four elections the RJD and the Samata Party/JD(U) fought each other their fortunes alternated, one always getting substantially more than the other. But in 2014 the two found themselves staring at a total of six seats, the BJP-led alliance scooping up 31. Today, despite their differences the fear of extinction has brought the two parties on to one platform, with RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav even accepting Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as the alliance’s next chief ministerial candidate. They have realised that to remain politically relevant they must pool their resources, even urging the other anti-BJP outfits, the Congress and the Left, to join a grand alliance. For the Congress the stakes in Bihar may not be high, but the fact that a BJP defeat here would make it a gainer nationally saw it even playing a role in bringing the two Bihar leaders together. For if the Congress is seen to be part of a winning team again, the alliance forged in Bihar could become the core of an anti-BJP front. For the BJP, a defeat in Bihar would send out the message that it peaked last year with the J&K polls — and that it could well be downhill from now on.
