Nitish, Lalu stop Modi wave in Bihar

A curious day of counting of votes for the Bihar assembly polls dawned on Sunday with news channels claiming that early tends were in the favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party. It convinced enough BJP workers and supporters to break into celebrations by bursting crackers, confident that their party was on way to form its first ever government in Bihar.

Early trends seemed to follow the pattern set by opinion surveys and exit polls that the Bihar assembly elections were too close to call. However, the results were turning out to be a defeat for the BJP at the time of filing of this report at 11 am.

The poll results show the Mahagathbandan alliance led by the JD(U) leading in over 140 seats while the BJP alliance is yet to cross the 100 mark. 

The leads indicated that Bihar had chosen Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav over Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Bihar. According to the Election Commission leads at 10.50 am, the BJP, which had contested 160-seats, was struggling to be even the single largest party while its allies like Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party were performing poorly. Even the Congress, discredited in nearly all assembly polls after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, seemed to be doing better by aligning with JDU-RJD 'Mahagatbandhan' than most had expected.

Prime Minister Modi, meanwhile, visited senior BJP leader LK Advani to wish him on his 88th birthday. The Bihar results are likely to put a question mark on the science of psephology that agencies conducting opinion polls employ. It is also likely to be interpreted as the official end to the 'Modi wave' which had first been dissipated in the Delhi elections in February of this year after the successes of 2014. 

It would also seem that Nitish-Lalu combine have forged a new caste alliance, while the BJP's outreach to Dalits and Extremely Backward Castes has failed. This is also the second defeat of the BJP when faced with a credible local face - first in Delhi against Arvind Kejriwal and now in Bihar against Nitish Kumar. The JD (U) campaign of 'Bahari', that is outsider, versus 'Bihari, also seem to have worked as the BJP had gone into the elections projecting Prime Minister Modi, and not any of its local leader, against Nitish Kumar.

However, a Lalu-Nitish alliance will bring its own set of contradictions as the two men aren't known to be the best of friends but their cohesion in this election surprised the BJP. The Bihar defeat is also likely to give a push to an alternative formation comprising regional parties and led by Nitish Kumar to challenge Modi in 2019.

THE MOVERS & SHAKERS