Bihar elections: Nitish Kumar's last stand

Facing 15 years of anti-incumbency, Nitish Kumar is on the defensive. He cannot expect to win on his governance record alone

In the 2015 elections to the Bihar state assembly, the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah had claimed at a rally in Raxaul that there would be celebrations in Pakistan if the National Democratic Alliance should lose the polls. “Crackers would be burst in Pakistan,” he said if the BJP were to lose. The same script is being reiterated by the party’s junior home minister Nityanand Rai, with his outlandish claim that a loss for the NDA in Bihar in the coming November polls will turn Bihar into a safe-haven for terrorists from Kashmir. Giriraj Kishore, another BJP