Bihar has shown Narendra Modi the door. India’s Prime Minister staked everything to get the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in Patna, and lost.
After this landslide loss, the credibility of the regime he heads in New Delhi is dented. The prospects of better governance and reform look dim. And the myth of Modi-as-vote-magnet is in tatters.
The BJP waded into Bihar without a coherent campaign. It’s only message was Modi, who addressed around three dozen rallies when he was not travelling overseas. No Prime Minister before Modi had campaigned so heavily in any state election.
So, despite the BJP’s feeble efforts to deny it now, the Bihar outcome is a referendum on the performance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And that is because Modi chose to make it so, pitting himself personally against Nitish Kumar.
Impact on National Politics
Today, the BJP’s spin doctors are in overdrive to insulate Modi from the fallout of the Bihar disaster, and it is a disaster for the saffron outfit. Among all political parties in the fray, the BJP contested the maximum number of seats – 160 out of 243. At the time of writing this, it won or led in less than a third of those.