In his third visit to Bihar, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi lent his weight to Kanhaiya Kumar’s Palayan roko, rozgaar do yatra (march to stop migration, give employment) in Begusarai. From appearances, the Congress looks to be warming up for an assertive role in the upcoming Bihar Assembly election.
Gandhi is making regular visits to Bihar while his core team is backing up his strategy to set up an intense poll battle. The former Congress president is trying to stitch together a new social engineering in Bihar.
His outreach has been seen among the extremely backward castes (EBCs) and the non-Paswan Dalit community. Gandhi’s meetings in Patna have been attended by emerging caste leaders from among the EBCs and non-Paswan Mahadalit.
Waqf Board Bill-led Turmoil in JD (U)
Incumbent Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar concluded his state-wide ‘yatra’ over a month ago. Kumar made promises worth over Rs 50,000 crores in districts in Bihar during the tour. His willingness to loosen the exchequer's purse strings ahead of the polls is arguably an admission that he faces anti-incumbency.
Some of the Muslim leaders of the JD(U) quit the party after the passage of the Waqf Board Amendment Bill in Parliament. Kumar has nursed his Muslim constituency while the JD(U) commands a small fraction of the minority vote base in Bihar. But ground reports suggest that Muslims in Bihar are livid with the CM for his party’s support to the Waqf Board Amendment Bill.
A visible anti-incumbency and sharp polarisation of Muslims in Bihar portend troubles for Kumar. The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) is priming to make windfall gains from simmering trouble in Kumar’s vote catchment constituencies.
Tejashwi Risks Strains with INDIA Bloc
Bihar’s former deputy CM and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav is sensing gains from the decades-old ‘M-Y’ equation. The party's confidence is shoring up with hopes of consolidation of the Muslim-Yadav vote base, almost 30 percent of the total electorate. Yadav’s ‘yatra’ also drew large and enthusiastic crowds.
With Yadav dominating the secular, anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)/Nitish rhetoric, his party risks straining its ties with its Opposition bloc allies. While he hopes to secure the ‘M-Y’ vote base like his father had once done, Yadav’s attempt to play ‘Big Brother’ in the Opposition seat adjustment could end up giving the advantage to the ruling BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which may escape without major losses as seen in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Onus on Congress to Make Yadav See Reality
Poor candidate selection by the RJD has been blamed in the past for the NDA avoiding an Uttar Pradesh-like reversal in the last Lok Sabha elections in Bihar. Union Minister Giriraj Singh’s victory margin in the Begusarai Lok Sabha seat came crashing from 4,22,217 in 2019 to just 81,480 in the 2024 general elections.
Similar situations emerged in several of the Lok Sabha seats such as Saran, Patna Sahib, Sheohar, and others. The NDA candidates won with much reduced margins.
Bihar-based political observers pin the blame on Yadav for poor candidate selection and one-upmanship in seat adjustment within the INDIA bloc which helped the NDA candidates win with narrow margins.
It is, thus, incumbent, on the Congress to take a key role in the ticket distribution, as well as seat adjustment within the INDIA bloc, to avoid repeating the mistakes made in 2024. The RJD’s one-upmanship was also seen in not giving the Purnia Lok Sabha seat to Congress. Rajesh Ranjan, alias Pappu Yadav, proved the RJD wrong by winning as an independent candidate from the Purnia Parliamentary constituency.
Congress, CPI(ML) Priming for Big Bihar Roles
While the Left is on a decay in national politics, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) [CPI(ML)] is holding its ground in Bihar. The CPI(ML) won two Lok Sabha seats in 2024. It had gained nine additional seats in 2020 state Assembly election to win a total of 12 seats.
The party has been cementing its hold on the EBC vote base in the Shahabad area of Bihar. It has also established a formidable cadre in parts of the state, with a unique campaign template. The CPI(ML) gathered the poll funds in recent elections by seeking Rs 20 from each household.
Having emerged as a giant killer in the Lok Sabha elections, trouncing heavyweights Upendra Singh Kushwaha (Karakat) and former Union minister RK Singh (Arrah), the CPI(ML) is now bracing up to contest as many as 50 Assembly seats.
The Congress is equally poised to contest a larger number of Assembly seats. The party may stake claims on 60-70 Assembly seats in Bihar. Together, the two parties may put the RJD in the spot.
With Communist Party of India (CPI) and a few smaller outfits also in the Opposition bloc, the RJD may face a situation where the party will need to cede space to allies. The Congress, consequently, may have to mentor the RJD and study the Bihar model of the NDA where the JD(U) and the BJP focus on high strike rates to win a maximum number of seats while contesting a smaller number of seats.
Despite the Lok Sabha upsets, the BJP has managed to instill a sense of self-doubt within the Opposition bloc by winning Assembly elections in Haryana, Maharashtra, and Delhi in quick succession while winning big in Jammu. But Bihar is politically a tough state for the BJP the upcoming polls will be a litmus test for its Hindutva ideology in the caste politics-dominated state.
Assembly elections in the past in Bihar have shown the BJP’s dependency on the chief minister. The reduced margins of its Lok Sabha victory in some of the saffron strongholds suggest its loosening grip.
In order to gain from the discomfort of the BJP and the JD(U), the Congress will need to align the INDIA bloc to a common electoral script with constituents concurring on strategies, including seat adjustments and ticket distributions. If the gaps in the Opposition strategy are not filled, the NDA will assert an upper hand in Bihar politics.
The Congress has made smart moves by appointing Rajesh Kumar as the state unit chief. The party's EBC-Mahadalit plot has potential and can indeed strengthen the ‘M-Y’ base of the RJD. But an electoral script is still missing for the INDIA bloc where constituents are treated equally.
(The author is a Delhi-based political journalist, who for over two decades worked for The New Indian Express, Deccan Chronicle, The Asian Age, and The Statesman. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.))