The 2005 October Bihar assembly election that bought the Nitish Kumar government to power was unusual in many ways. The vote share of both the BJP and JD(U) went up by approximately five percentage points each. The alliance as a whole witnessed a swing of ten percentage points in its favor from the month of February to October. Most of this came at the cost of independent’s who lost a substantial base.
In the elections held in February 2005 the independents polled about sixteen percent of the votes and forty of them were in serious contest. In the October elections the Independents polled just about eight percent of the votes and twenty of them were in serious contest. The shrinkage of this base coupled with the minor losses suffered by the RJD and the LJSP caused the huge swing in favor of the ruling alliance. The BJP JD(U) alliance together polled about thirty six percent of the votes, its highest as a combine in any assembly election in the state.
.png)
In the year 2000 the alliance polled about thirty percent of the votes in undivided Bihar. With the formation of Jharkhand the BJP lost some of its strong holds and the overall vote share of the alliance shrunk in the state. The vote share of the alliance further went up to 38% in the last Lok Sabha election. The gains were largely for the JD(U) which polled about 24% of the vote. This marked an important milestone in the long journey of the JD(U) which polled only 6.67% of the votes in its maiden election entry in 1995 in the state assembly of Bihar. It also marked the building of a broader social coalition in favor of the BJP JD(U) , with the JD(U) starting off as a party that could count only on a couple of backward castes in the state as its support base.
The ensuing movements in the state politics need to be looked at in this light. Two leaders recently joined the JD(U), one was Taslimuddin of Kishanganj and the other is Subodh Roy of Bhagalpur. Both the Lok Sabha seats were formerly under the BJP’ s belt. This marks a new phase of expansion in the journey of the JD(U). Till now the party had grown with the BJP in tow , its growth now would however have to be at the expense of its partner. The rebuff to Narendra Modi must be seen in this light . The JD(U) now needs its independent space to grow.
In terms of post mandal politics this is going to be a strategic realignment of the states caste equations for the first time not fundamentally united by the desire to overturn a caste order but to prioritize governance and provide caste as the bulwark to support the same.
Even the allocation of seats between the two partners needs to be seen in this light. The two parties together contested 241 seats last time, 139 by the JD (U) and 102 by the BJP. While there is an agreement to repeat the same seat sharing formula, the quality of seats contested could be different from last time. The delimitation could be one of the major factors impacting the choice of seats and their allocation.
If the alliance strengthens its position after the polls, the gains for the JD(U) could be substantially larger than the gains for the BJP. A very symbolic achievement for the JD(U) could be touching the 100 mark. The various caste based sammelan’s etc must be seen in this light. In terms of post mandal politics this is going to be a strategic realignment of the states caste equations for the first time not fundamentally united by the desire to overturn a caste order but to prioritize governance and provide caste as the bulwark to support the same. It could herald a new era where development and caste politics coexist and rather complement each other.
(Writer Jai Mrug is a psephologist with twelve years of experience in the field of electronic and print media, he has been an avid tracker of elections in India and has worked with leading Television houses in the country and has analysed elections for a number of leading newspapers in the country.)
Ask a Question: Ping our analyst on ask@bolevoter.com
