Bihar Vidhan Sabha 2020 Election Results: The state voted in a three-phase election.
Patna:
In the early tracks of Bihar, the BJP appeared to get ahead of its partner Nitish Kumar, the five-time Chief Minister who is the face of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the elections. Clues indicated Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United was dragging the NDA numbers.
The BJP has always played a supporting role in Bihar, especially against Nitish Kumar. Bihar is the only Hindi belt state where the BJP has never held the post of Chief Minister.
But if the trend continues, this result may deprive Nitish Kumar of Big Brother status in the alliance.
This time, the Bihar campaign was thorny for the allies.
In 2015, Nitish Kumar had fought with Lalu Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Congress. Two years before that, he had severed ties with his ally BJP over his projection of Narendra Modi as a candidate for prime minister.
Nitish Kumar resisted when the BJP came to power in the center with a massive mandate for Narendra Modi.
But his alliance with the RJD and Congress quickly soured, and in mid-2017, he resigned, left his partners, and embraced the BJP again.
In his recap and acceptance of PM Modi’s leadership, Nitish Kumar lost his luster. But despite the problems, the reunited NDA continued for three more years.
Along the way, the BJP repeatedly rejected speculation that it was trying to rule out Nitish Kumar and insisted that Nitish Kumar was the NDA’s top ministerial candidate.
However, the NDA ally, Chirag Paswan, once again spoiled the scene by announcing a solo battle for the sole purpose of defeating Nitish Kumar. Chirag Paswan maintained throughout that he remained a devotee of Prime Minister Modi and hoped to form a government with the BJP without Nitish Kumar. He was even heard at rallies asking for votes for Prime Minister Modi or for his own Lok Janshakti Party (LJP).
To Nitish Kumar’s chagrin, the counterattacks to Chirag Paswan only came from the Bihar BJP. The silence from the top management in Delhi and their refusal to scold the young Paswan indicated that he was Plan B of the BJP. It also served to reinforce the impression that the BJP wants to downsize Nitish Kumar to size.
A section of the BJP in Bihar has been upset by the indirect effect of anger against Nitish Kumar over jobs, the migrant crisis and the handling of the coronavirus.
But it is Chirag Paswan who seems to be doing the most damage to Nitish Kumar’s group. He had run candidates in all the seats contested by the JDU.
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