Bihar alliances on shaky ground

THE entry of the Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) was expected to muddy the waters for the two dominant alliances in the two-phase Bihar Assembly elections. However, the problems being faced by these alliances are of their leaders’ own making, not because of the high-decibel campaign launched by Prashant Kishor’s JSP — although its significance cannot be undermined.

Even as the filing of nominations for the second phase is set to conclude today, both the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), including the ruling Janata Dal (United) and the BJP, and the Opposition’s Mahagathbandhan (MGB), led by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), are at sixes and sevens — the MGB to a far greater extent than the NDA.

Unless the MGB puts its house in order, the advantages that should accrue to an Opposition confronting Chief Minister Nitish Kumar — who has been at the helm for 20 years — might be frittered away.

The MGB — steered by RJD founder and former CM Lalu Prasad Yadav and led by his younger son Tejashwi Yadav — seems to be already fancying itself as the winner, going by reports that the father-son duo is inaccessible to smaller partners who owe their importance to the caste-based votes they command. Mukesh Sahani, who heads the Vikassheel Insaan Party, believes he is worthy of the status granted to him by his party’s abbreviation, VIP. He is banking on nearly 9 per cent votes of Mallahs/Nishads, an extremely backward-caste riverine community that largely lives off fishing and counts significantly in north Bihar.

Sahani wanted to be named as the MGB’s deputy CM candidate — a tall order considering the Congress’ reluctance to even project Tejashwi as the coalition’s CM face. The VIP was given 14 of the 243 Assembly seats, but Sahani unilaterally announced a candidate for an extra seat.

The RJD’s refusal to speak with Sahani almost forced him to walk out of the MGB until Dipankar Bhattacharya, the leader of another vital constituent, the CPI(Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, called up Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, urging him to speak with Sahani.

Rahul placated Sahani, who, in a missive to the former Congress president, claimed that he was promised 35 seats before the number was scaled down to 14. It is unclear who gave the ‘assurance’, but instead of playing on the numbers, Sahani cleverly invoked ‘ideology’ and ‘aspirations’ of socially underprivileged sections to buttress his argument.

From the RJD’s perspective, the support of so-called smaller entities like the VIP is crucial to counter the NDA’s strength. The RJD’s committed Yadav vote bank has not deserted Lalu and Tejashwi, but decades of harping on backward-caste empowerment in a ‘Mandalised’ polity might sound tiresome, especially when large-scale migration to other states has opened up many alternatives in politics and government service for all castes, including the Yadavs. Can the RJD interminably take the Yadav votes for granted when its politics is avowedly family-centric?

Even Tejashwi’s siblings are unhappy with his elevation to the detriment of sisters Misa Bharti and Rohini Acharya. Lalu’s elder son Tej Pratap Yadav was expelled from the RJD as well as the family for his politically disruptive activities, and he has since floated his own outfit, the Janshakti Janata Dal.

The VIP might have been persuaded to stay back in the MGB, but the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), which heads a coalition government in the neighbouring state along with two junior allies (the RJD and the Congress), is set to contest the Bihar polls independently after talks with Lalu fell through. Likewise, the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party led by Pashupati Kumar Paras, the estranged uncle of Chirag Paswan — who heads the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), a BJP ally — walked out of the MGB, citing ‘betrayal’ in seat-sharing.

To cap it all, the Congress released its own list of 48 candidates in the first phase, strengthening the impression that the upcoming election could witness a free-for-all like in 2005. The Congress’ decision was described as setting the stage for “friendly fights”, but going by past elections, such fights are marked by levels of hostility not seen in traditional contests. The wrath unleashed on so-called friends is more intense than that against an adversary from a rival party.

As the Congress high command seemed unwilling to project Tejashwi as the MGB’s CM face, Bihar Congress leaders Akhilesh Prasad Singh and Tariq Anwar — aware of the implications of alienating the RJD — publicly said that the RJD scion should be positioned for the top post.

The Congress top brass is convinced that Rahul’s Voter Adhikar Yatra, aimed at drawing attention to the allegedly fudged electoral rolls that ‘disenfranchised’ lakhs of voters, set the tone for a confrontation with the NDA. But there is a belated realisation in the Opposition camp that the ‘vote chori’ slogan has not clicked on the ground, unlike the issues aggressively flagged by the JSP while targeting the Nitish Kumar regime.

The BJP has a way of neutralising internal dissent arising from competing interests in a coalition. But even given its superior alliance management skills, has it bitten off more than it can chew by playing one NDA constituent against another?

The biggest beneficiary of the NDA’s seat-sharing arrangement is undoubtedly Chirag, son of the late Ram Vilas Paswan, founder of the Lok Janshakti Party. The BJP is convinced that Chirag is the true legatee of the Dalit electorate. The BJP has stopped short of naming Nitish as the NDA’s CM candidate, but affirmed that the elections are being fought under his leadership. Chirag, who is fast becoming a practitioner of realpolitik, has said that the CM would be chosen on the basis of the number of seats contributed by alliance members to the NDA’s kitty — a subtle hint that he has not ruled himself out.

Chirag’s remark suits the BJP, which has consistently worked towards projecting the young man, now a Central minister, as Nitish’s equal in order to reduce its dependence on the CM. The Chirag-Nitish rivalry was visible in the last Assembly polls, when his party went solo and ate into the JD(U)’s votes. How things will pan out this time is an imponderable that can have a bearing on the poll outcome.

Radhika Ramaseshan is a senior journalist based in New Delhi; she worked as Political Editor at The Telegraph. Her X handle is @Radrama