The Janata Dal (United)-Bharatiya Janata Party’s spectacular performance in Bihar was along expected lines.
Out of 40 seats in the state, the alliance managed to win more than 30, resulting in the rout of two of the most important players in the state to date – Ramvilas Paswan of the Lok Janashakti Party (LJP) and Lalu Prasad of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). In fact, Paswan lost his own seat of Hajipur.
Of the two seats that Lalu Prasad contested, he could win only one, and his party just three more.
His party had contributed over 20 seats to the UPA kitty in 2004.
When Nitish Kumar came to power in the state in 2005, he took a series of dramatic steps that put the state on the trajectory of progress. His emphasis was on restoring legitimacy and authority of the state, which most believed had been eroded by 15 years of rule by Prasad. So restoration of law and order was rewarded this time.
The campaign this time was: Vote for those who govern. Some reliance on bureaucracy in this process was inevitable and as the bureaucracy in the state is dominated by the upper castes, Paswan and Prasad tried to launch a campaign that the chief minister was in the grip of an upper caste mafia.
This had little resonance as, simultaneously, Kumar was putting in place a powerful social combination of extreme backward classes and poor Muslims, both of whom watched from the sidelines as Prasad and Paswan organised the prosperous and the powerful among the lower castes and minorities.
The Kosi floods caused the Nitish Kumar government to falter a bit. The government had news of the breach but did not act in time. However, this was excused by the voters in the light of the massive rehabilitation measures launched by the state government. This is testified by the fact that the JD(U) won the Madhepura seat and the BJP won Purnea, both areas acutely affected by the floods.
Bihar is probably the only state where the Muslims seem to have voted for the JD(U) as well the BJP in some areas. In fact, if the RJD and the Congress had fought together, there was some chance of the RJD getting some share of the Muslim vote.
The defeat of the RJD candidate, Taslimuddin, from Kishanganj, a Muslim-dominated constituency, tells it all.
Now, a confident Nitish Kumar is likely to push for reforms even more aggressively in the state, although rivals could be spurred into more intense action by their defeat and are certainly going to scrutinise Kumar’s policies.
