It was curtains down for Nitish Kumar and JDU in Bihar just a couple of months ago. Nitish Kumar came back to NDA again and his political flip flops were seen with more embarrassment.

While at the same time, Opposition leader from RJD, Tejaswi Yadav transformed himself to a mature politician. He was drawing huge crowds and political observers started to give him political credibility. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi created a great atmosphere through Bharat Jodo Yatra, and both Tejaswi and Rahul,s joint images of friendship were circulating like hot cakes everywhere.

Under the above circumstances, JDU looked like a doomed political entity. Everyone blamed Nitish Kumar's flip-flop-flip for the tight spot in which the JD(U) found itself in. But the results on 4th June changed every perception for JDU as well as Nitish Kumar.If there is one star that has emerged from a rattled NDA ship, is the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U). Unlike the performance of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which was expected to do well, the JD(U)'s result came as a surprise to many political pundits.

Poll strategist like Prashant Kishore who wrote off JDU as a serious political party long back in 2023, had to eat the humble pie of his wrong Prediction. Contesting in just 16 seats in Bihar, the Election Commission of India data suggest, the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) has won on 12 seats in Bihar out of the 16 it fought. Through this performance Nitish Kumar proved he is the undisputed leader of the Extremely Backward Classes (EBC), which helped even the BJP with consolidation of votes.

The EBC is nothing but a social engineering by Nitish. It is OBC minus the Yadavs, a traditional voter base of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). JDU won in seats of Banka, Bhagalpur, Madhepura, Supaul, Munger, Jhanjharpur, Valmiki Nagar, Gopalganj and Siwan, to name a few. After the Andhra Pradesh-based Telugu Desam Party (TDP), it is the JD(U) that has the most number of seats. This places Nitish Kumar on a bargaining seat.

In the last two decades, Nitish Kumar has been the only constant in Bihar. Despite the fact that his party, the JD(U), is the number three party in the Bihar Assembly, Nitish Kumar and the JD(U) have prevailed. That explains the bargaining power of the Bihar Chief Minister.

This turnaround should be credited to mass support of Women Voters and backing of EBC and core Bjp votes. JDU leaders who talked in secret told that party share of 15% votes combined with Bjp vote share brings in 40% plus vote share which is a win win situation for both the parties.

But the question remains that why after so much hardwork Tejaswi Yadav failed. He had Lalu Yadav at his side this time plus some serious ground work from Congress. The answer lies in the image cultivated of Lalu and RJD in Bihar in last one year. During the last government, Tejaswi Yadav backed off from his employment related poll promises and tried to shift every serious topics towards Nitish Kumar.

Women Voters are particularly averse towards RJD due to their past reputation. As the Opposition created a atmosphere that Nitish is politically finished, his EBC and Women Supporters came for his rescue. The insecurity for the Common EBC Voters towards Yadav domination in villages were enough for then to consolidate behind their leader Nitish. The anger at the ground against Bjp for inflation and Unemployment were over powered by caste based consolidation. We can see that LJP won all the five seats, which means any anti incumbency against PM Modi was soaked by JDU and LJP through their right approach towards caste arithmetic.

People were getting torn appart by talks of threat to reservation by Congress and Vikas by NDA, and in this tug of war, the Voters of Bihar put a counter weight against Bjp by giving some serious numbers to its allies.



By Gaurav Roy


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