Chirag Paswan’s LJP won just one seat and secured less than six percent of the vote (Archive)
Nitish Kumar appears poised to return as Bihar’s chief minister (for the sixth time) despite his party’s poor performance in the elections; Janata Dal United (JDU) went from 71 seats in 2015 to 43 this year.
A major factor in the decline of the JDU’s fortunes is believed to be Chirag Paswan and his Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), which ran candidates against the Chief Minister’s party in all seats and ended up eating up the JDU’s share of votes.
The LJP may have won just the seat (Matihani, where Raj Kumar Singh got 333 more votes than JDU’s Narendra Singh) but got 5.66 percent of the total vote. The BJP, which emerged as the main member of the NDA, obtained 19.46% and the JDU 15.39%.
In the Mahnar seat, which is part of the Vaishali district, JDU’s Umesh Kushwaha still resents his defeat at the hands of the RJD candidate, the wife of a local strongman and politician, by less than 8,000 votes.
The x factor in Kushwaha’s defeat: Rabindra Kumar Singh, 53, a businessman and politician vying for an LJP ticket. He obtained 31,256 votes, most of which, Kushwaha claims, were destined for Nitish Kumar and himself.
“The truth is that if the NDA had been together, we would have 200 seats. But due to the LJP factor, the JDU faced a lot of losses. This was their (Chirag Paswan’s) goal,” Singh said, adding: “We didn’t have a strategy. to harm the JDU … people were already fed up with them. We had our own campaign strategy of ‘Bihar first, Bihari first’.
However, Kushwaha has an understandably different opinion and alleges conspiracy.
“The votes that were part of my calculation, for example the NDA vote, I didn’t get. The vote was transferred to the LJP and also to the RJD … if I got the full NDA vote, I would have won. The BJP vote yes not transfer me. What can I say? “he said.
Mr. Kushwaha also stated that the LJP got a much higher number of votes than it should, given the caste combinations and sentiments at stake. “My vote has transferred to them. It could be a conspiracy,” he declared.
In the village of Mukundpur Bhat, which is part of the Mahnar headquarters, there are more indications of how the LJP-JDU equation was developed on the ground.
Ashok Kumar Singh, 62, a member of the Thakur community, voted for the JDU in 2015. This year he voted for the LJP (whose candidate was from the same caste), an indication of how the LJP smartly planned and ate the NDA voter base.
“I used to support the JDU, but now there is a difference. Before, Nitish Kumar attacked corruption and confiscated property. He tried to cede seats to the LJP that were in areas dominated by RJD – what should Chirag Paswan have done?” he asks.
The BJP has denied claims that it had a pre-election agreement with the LJP to do exactly what it did: drastically reduce Nitish Kumar’s influence and position in the NDA. The Chief Minister’s poor performance has also sparked rumors that he could be replaced, as the BJP seeks to exercise its newfound authority.
That has been ruled out by the BJP, but Sunday’s meeting of the new legislature will provide more concrete evidence of how the new JDU-BJP relationship will work.
The next elections in Bihar are still a long way off and in that time it will be interesting to see how this unfolds.
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