Tag: RJD

Jharkhand Assembly polls: Congress-JMM seat-sharing talks in final stages; announcement likely today in Ranchi.

Source – firstpost.com

Seat-sharing talks between the Congress and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) for the Assembly election are in final stages and an announcement is likely on Friday, sources said.

The Congress, JMM and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) are attempting to form an alliance to defeat the ruling BJP in the five-phase election in November-December in the eastern state.

According to sources, deliberations are on between senior leaders of the Congress and the JMM for finalising the seat-sharing agreement and an announcement is likely to be made in Ranchi on Friday.

Jharkhand Pradesh Congress Committee president Rameshwar Oraon and Congress Legislature Party leader Alamgir Alam met JMM chief Hemant Soren.

Sources said the JMM is likely to be the leading partner in the alliance and will contest on more than 50 percent of the seats.

The Congress may settle with 25-30 seats in the 81-member Assembly, leaving the rest for smaller allies.

The Congress had contested on all seats in the last Assembly election in 2014, it may settle for 25-30 seats as part of the alliance.

The Congress has already held preliminary discussions on its possible candidates for the election at a meeting of the party’s screening committee.

Another meeting of the screening panel will be held on 9 November. On the same day, a meeting of the central election committee chaired by Sonia Gandhi will be held to finalise the list of candidates.

Sources said the Congress is unlikely to succeed in its efforts to form a grand alliance with the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM) of Babulal Marandi deciding to go it alone in the election.

The Left parties are also unlikely to be a part of the alliance as their demand for seats are unlikely to be met, sources said.

The Left has two members in the current Assembly, while the Congress has six.

Sources add that the RJD is likely to settle for around 6-7 seats as part of the alliance, even though Lalu Prasad Yadav’s outfit has been demanding 14-15 seats.

“Our aim is to remove the Raghubar Das-led BJP government… The Congress and its partners will try to fulfil the dreams of people of the state that have not been fulfilled so far,” RPN Singh, the Congress party in-charge of Jharkhand affairs, told PTI.

Asked if the Congress was willing to play second fiddle to JMM in the state, he said that when there is a coalition, all allies contest as a family to accomplish the dreams of the people of Jharkhand.

Singh said the Congress would soon come out with a manifesto of its own, besides having a common minimum programme with the JMM.

Jharkhand polls: Leaders in Delhi to finalise lists.

Source – indiatoday.in

As polling day nears in Jharkhand, all the political parties are engrossed in finalising their candidates for the 81-seat Assembly.

Marathon meetings and hectic discussions are being conducted by the parties.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) have been the heavyweights in the elections here while regional parties like the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and All Jharkhand Students’ Union Party (AJSUP) also have stakes here.

For national parties like the BJP and the Congress, the scene has shifted to Delhi where state leaders are camping to finalise their lists.

A BJP leader said Chief Minister Raghubar Das, state party chief Lakshman Gilua, and other leaders are in Delhi as they were asked to reach the national capital. Before leaving for Delhi, the BJP’s state election committee met on Wednesday under Gilua’s chairmanship and a list of candidates was readied.

Sources in the BJP said the party’s central election committee would be meeting on November 8 where the names of the candidates will be finalised.

Sources also said that Suresh Mahato, chief of BJP ally All Jharkhand Student Union, has also reached Delhi to discuss the seat-sharing arrangement.

Congress state leaders, including state party chief Rameshwar Oraon and senior leaders like Aalamgir and Subodhkant Sahay have also moved to Delhi. Party spokesperson Kishore Shahdeo told IANS that the party’s screening committee had met on Wednesday. But, sources said that candidates could not be finalised as the seat-sharing arrangement with the JMM is yet to be finalised.

Congress sources said that the central election committee is likely to meet this week to finalise their candidates.

As the political parties are readying their lists, most of the aspirants are keeping a watch on the happenings in Delhi.

The Assembly polls in Jharkhand will be conducted in five phases from November 30 to December 20, an exercise spread over 21 days because of the Naxal problem that poses a security challenge.

Counting of votes will be taken up on December 23.

Of the 81 Assembly seats in Jharkhand, nine are reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SC) and 28 for the Scheduled Tribes (ST).

Assembly Elections 2019: All you need to know about the Jharkhand state polls.

Source – moneycontrol.com

The Election Commission of India, on November 1, announced the polling schedule for Assembly elections in Jharkhand.

With the announcement, the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) came into effect in the state.

Tenure of the current Jharkhand Legislative Assembly will end on January 5, 2020.

The election for all 81 Assembly seats will happen in five phases spanning over 20 days.

Important dates to watch out for in Jharkhand, by phases:

Phase 1> Issue of notification: November 6
> Last date of nomination: November 13
> Scrutiny of nominations: November 14

> Last date of withdrawal of candidature: November 16

> Voting: November 30

Phase 2> Issue of notification: November 11
> Last date of nomination: November 18
> Scrutiny of nominations: November 19

> Last date of withdrawal of candidature: November 21

> Voting: December 7

Phase 3> Issue of notification: November 16
> Last date of nomination: November 25
> Scrutiny of nominations: November 26

> Last date of withdrawal of candidature: November 28

> Voting: December 12

Phase 4> Issue of notification: November 22
> Last date of nomination: November 29
> Scrutiny of nominations: November 30

> Last date of withdrawal of candidature: December 2

> Voting: December 16

Phase 5> Issue of notification: November 26
> Last date of nomination: December 3
> Scrutiny of nominations: December 4

> Last date of withdrawal of candidature: December 6

> Voting: December 20

Counting of votes for all phases will happen together on December 23.

Reserved seats

While, 28 seats have been reserved for Scheduled Tribes (STs), nine have been reserved for Scheduled Castes (SCs)

Voters and polling

According to data released by EC, Jharkhand has a total of 2.26 crore eligible voters. Out of these, 41,336 are service voters.

The number of polling stations that will be used by voters across the state is 29,464. This number is 19 percent higher than in 2014.

To encourage greater constructive participation of women in the electoral process, EC has directed that at least one polling station will be managed exclusively by women in every Assembly constituency. In such stations, all election staff, including security personnel, will be women.

EC has confirmed that Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPATs) will be used in this election.

Lowdown on the political situation

Chief Minister Raghubar Das-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is hoping to retain power in the state. BJP is widely expected to contest the election in an alliance with the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU).

The BJP-AJSU alliance is being challenged by Opposition parties such as former chief ministers Shibu Soren and Hemant Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), the Indian National Congress and the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) (JVM-P). The three parties had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election in an alliance and are expected to fight in this formation again, with the possibility of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) joining hands.

BJP’s ally in Bihar, the Janata Dal (United), has said that it will contest all 81 seats alone.No alliance has declared their seat-sharing formula so far.

After witnessing below-expectation Assembly election results in Haryana and Maharashtra in October, the BJP is recalibrating its strategy. Many factors that came into play in Haryana and Maharashtra could may play a key role in Jharkhand too.

Bihar Man Blows Away Skulls of RJD MLA’s Kin, Her Male Friend After They Resist His Rape Attempt

Source: news18.com

Munger: A woman, who is an RJD MLA’s niece, and a young man were found dead in Bihar’s Munger district with their skulls blown away by gunshots in what police described as a double murder.

The bodies of Mohammed Asif and Twinkle Yadav, both aged 25, were recovered from the Sadar block premises in Mofussil police station area — around 180 km east of Patna — on Friday evening, district Superintendent of Police Gaurav Mangla said.

Yadav, who was living in Delhi for some time and preparing for medical entrance tests, had come home, the SP said. Her paternal uncle, Vijay Kumar Vijay, is the sitting Rashtriya Janata Dal legislator from Munger and had also represented the Lok Sabha constituency in 1990s.

Asif was a local resident whose father eked out a living in Saudi Arabia, according to Mangla, who had said earlier in the day that it initially appeared a case of “failed love affair”.

Later, it emerged that Asif’s friend, Danish, who was accompanied by some of his associates, allegedly tried to rape the woman, but faced stiff resistance from the two, the officer said. “In a fit of rage, he (Danish) shot them dead and fled.”

Earlier, Danish, who was picked up for questioning, said he had provided Asif with a firearm. He claimed that Asif shot Yadav dead before pulling the trigger at himself, according to the SP.

Danish claimed that Asif reached the spot with Yadav on Friday night to receive the firearm. It was not clear yet for what purpose Asif had sought the weapon, the SP said.

“We recovered the pistol used in the incident and the mobile phones of the deceased from Danish,” Mangla said. “Based on inputs from forensic investigations, we grilled Danish intensively and he spilled the beans.”

Efforts are on to nab the other associates of Danish, the officer added.

‘Ploy by Companies to Pressure Govt to Lower Taxes’: Bihar Minister Says There’s No Economic Slowdown

Source: news18.com

Patna: The country is not facing economic slowdown and big companies are trying pressurise the government to lower tax rates by showing a decline in manufacturing, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi claimed on Wednesday. His comment invited immediate ridicule from the opposition RJD.

Modi, who also holds the finance portfolio in the Nitish Kumar government, cited the example of Parle G biscuits and said its demand had, in fact, increased in Bihar.

He doubted the claim of its manufacturers that a fall in demand of the company’s biscuits could have been caused by developed states opting for expensive pastries instead of the cheap confectionary with a higher tax rate. But it did not appear to be so.

Parle, the manufacturers of Parle G biscuits had recently warned of a massive lay-off following a slump in production which they blamed on a fall in demand caused by an increase in prices.

The rise in prices, it said, is due to a rise in the cost of production resulting from higher tax rates payable for confectionery items under GST, which came into force two years ago.

There is no mandi (economic slowdown). All these reports one gets to see in the media about automobiles and other sectors suffering is actually a ploy by lobbies in the corporate world to put pressure on the government for lowering tax rates, the senior BJP leader said at a programme organized by a news channel in Ranchi.

Sushil Modi was heavily trolled on Twitter by opposition RJD for his comments. Veteran RJD leader Shivanand Tiwary charged him with “trying to wish away a financial crisis that is too stark”.

“Of late, Sushil Kumar Modi has begun sounding like the French monarch who said if people did not have bread, they should eat cakes,” Tiwary told PTI here.

The phrase is commonly attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette supposedly uttered during one of the famines that occurred in France in 1789 during the reign of her husband

King Louis XVI ahead of the French Revolution.

Recently, he (Sushil Modi) said that the decline in automobiles was because people did not like to buy vehicles during the Pitri Paksha which in fact began only last week and continues for only a fortnight,” Tiwary, who was a member of the Rabri Devi cabinet, said.

“Before that he had scandalized all by claiming that economic slowdown was some sort of a seasonal phenomenon which occurred during monsoons and automatically got rectified later on. It all displays his utter ignorance about financial matters, though he is the minister in charge of the department, the RJD national vice-president said.

He said, the recent report by an international media house has stated that investors are withdrawing capital from the country and there are no fresh investments. Noted economists have time and again pointed out that the unimpressive GDP growth rate of five per cent too might be an exaggerated figure as it does not take into account the huge unorganized sector which is yet to recover from the impact of demonetization, Tiwary said.

Our Deputy CM seems to be in the same frame of mind as last year when he had hoped for less crime during a religious festival by cajoling criminals with folded hands to give up their activities for the period, he quipped.

At the inauguration of the Pitri Paksh fair at Gaya in 2018, Sushil Modi had urged those involved in anti-social activities to refrain from indulging in crimes during the fortnight-long congregation as visitors came from far and wide and they might return with a bad image of Bihar in mind. The deputy chief minister had invited severe ridicule from political opponents for it.

Non-bailable warrant issued againt RJD lawmaker in sexual abuse case

Source: hindustantimes.com

A court here on Friday issued a non-bailable warrant against RJD legislator in Bhojpur, Arun Yadav, in a case relating to sexual abuse of a minor girl.

District and Sessions Judge R K Singh, who holds the charge of special POCSO court, issued the NBW against Sandesh MLA Arun Yadav following an application filed by the district police.

On Wednesday, the police had prayed before special court of POCSO act to issue a warrant against the MLA but the latter found several shortcomings in the petition.

According to sources, the court had asked the investigating officer to file the petition with update case diary. Since the court was closed for’ Anant Chaturdashi’ on Thursday, the IO filed a fresh petition with update case diary on Friday.

While the girl, in her first statement recorded under section 164 of criminal procedure code (CrPC) had failed to name the MLA, a video circulating on social media since September 1 purportedly showed her naming Yadav.

Subsequently, on September 6, her statement was again recorded before a magistrate under section 164 of CrPC following court’s nod. This time, she named Arun Yadav.

So far the police claimed to have arrested four persons in this case.

The Sandesh MLA is the second state legislator facing charges of raping a minor girl. Earlier, RJD MLA from Nawada Raj Ballabh Prasad was convicted and awarded life term in a rape case in Nalanda district.

Bihar Oppn bogged down with many ideas on fighting NDA

Source: deccanherald.com

The Opposition in Bihar, still smarting under the crushing loss in all but one seat in the Lok Sabha polls, seems to be bogged down with too many ideas when it comes to fighting the Assembly polls next year, when it will face the formidable NDA once again.

Veteran RJD leader and former union minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh on Friday again called for a merger of all the regional parties in the bloated and loosely-knit Mahagathbandhan – a view that has few takers even in his own party.

Hindustani Awam Morcha, a smaller constituent, reacted with sneer with its spokesman Danish Rizvan, remarking “Merger is a good idea. We would welcome it if RJD and other constituents agree to merge with HAM”.

Notably, HAM founding president Jitan Ram Manjhi, a former chief minister, has been threatening the grand Alliance that he would quit and go it alone in the Assembly polls if his demands are not accepted.

Manjhi’s demand is that if the grand alliance wins, it should have two Deputy CMs, besides the chief minister and these posts should be held by one candidate each from the extremely backward classes, the Scheduled Castes and the minorities.

The formula suggested by Manjhi virtually rules out the possibility of accepting the leadership of the Tejashwi Yadav, Lalu Prasad’s younger son or any other member of his family which controls the RJD, who belong to a powerful OBC caste.

RLSP chief Upendra Kushwaha, a former NDA constituent who switched sides less than a year ago, has suggested that the grand alliance should be expanded to include other entities like the Left parties.

The Left parties, which are seen as a spent force in the state, have so far shown little interest in the proposal.

Amid this deluge of political strategies, Congress MLC Prem Chandra Mishra has warned the alliance members about the lurking threat from a recently formed front of a number of disgruntled leaders, which will benefit only the NDA.

The Bihar Navnirman Morcha was formed a fortnight ago by former state ministers Narendra Singh and Renu Kushwhaha, previously with JD(U) and BJP respectively, and Arun Kumar, the former RLSP MP from Jehanabad.

Speculations are rife that Rajesh Ranjan, alias Pappu Yadav, may also join the front as he has been disowned by the grand alliance and spurned by the NDA.

“All these leaders who have formed the Morcha, as well as those who are expected to join, wield influence in their respective areas. The social equation is such that if they enter the fray, they will cut into the votes of the grand alliance and benefit only the NDA. Something needs to be done about it, said Mishra.

NRC demand in Bihar makes NDA a divided house

Source: hindustantimes.com

First came the opposition to the triple talaq bill. Then the disagreement on the abrogation of Article 370. And when things seem to be settling down within the NDA, the BJP’s demand for National Register for Citizens (NRC) in the Seemanchal region has once again brought uneasiness in the alliance in Bihar.

The two alliance partners, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Janata Dal(United), have come face-to-face after the BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP and senior RSS leader Rakesh Sinha initiated the demand for NRC in four Bihar districts bordering West Bengal that have strong Muslim population.

While Sinha and few other BJP leaders are insistent that the influx of foreigners in these four districts has adversely impacted their local demography, JD(U) leaders, especially its minority face Gulam Rasool Baliyawi and party principal general secretary KC Tyagi, have criticised it as a case of minority hunting. The JD(U)’s vice-president Prashant Kishor had also criticised NRC in his recent tweet.

“We strongly favour NRC in the Seemanchal region. The region is replete with Bangladesh nationals, who have illegally migrated and settled there over the last several years,” said Sinha, who had been one of the most vocal protagonists of Hindutva politics. “There is an urgent need for NRC in Kishanganj, Katihar, Purnea and Araria districts,” he added.

Though no senior BJP leader has come out strongly in support of Sinha’s demand, none of them has opposed it either. In fact, Sinha has the silent support of several of his party’s leaders, who are only preferring to stay away from making any statement.

The BJP and RSS have been eyeing to consolidate their position in Seemanchal for a long time but have failed to penetrate because of the high Muslim population in the region. Muslims account for 67.70% of the population in Kishanganj, 38% in Purnea, 43% in Katihar and more than 40% in Araria. However, Muslims only form 16.5% of Bihar’s 105 million population as per 2011 census.

The BJP, in a tactical move and taking into account the Muslim factor, gave four Lok Sabha seats to the JD(U) and contested only Araria earlier this year. The JD(U) won Purnia, Katihar and Madhepura and the Congress managed to win the Kishanganj seat, a traditional Congress bastion which it has won eight times so far. The BJP and JD(U) together won 17 and 16 seats respectively out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

In the 2015 assembly elections, the Grand Alliance, of which the JD(U) was then a part, had won 29 seats out of 37 seats in the Seemanchal and Kosi regions. Out of these, the JD(U) had won 14, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) seven and Congress eight. The BJP could manage to win just seven seats, while one seat had gone in favour of CPI(ML).

The assembly elections in Bihar are due in 2020. The GA comprising the RJD, JD(U) and Congress had won 178 out of 243 seats while the BJP could win 53 seats only in the last state polls. The JD(U) returned to the NDA’s fold in 2017. The alliance, also comprising the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), won a whopping 39 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, almost clean-sweeping the polls.

“The BJP’s demand for NRC is irking,” a JD(U) leader, who did not want to be named, said.

“The 2020 polls are knocking at the doors and such announcements will only displease the minorities, who have in the LS polls, voted for NDA in large numbers,” he added.

The JD(U)’s prominent Muslim face Baliyawi went on to seek NRC across the country. “Muslims in Seemanchal are not afraid of NRC but my question is why the minorities are being targeted through such absurd steps,” he asked.

Another senior JD(U) leader and Bihar industries minister Shyam Rajak said there is no outsider or foreigner in Bihar. “All those living here are Biharis,” he said.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, who is also the JD(U) president, has repeatedly said that his party is not in favour of NRC.

“NRC is a very sensitive issue and it was implemented in Assam following clearance from the Supreme Court. But there is no need for NRC in Bihar or other states in the country. Our party is fully against sending citizens outside the country in the name of NRC,” said JD(U)’s principal general secretary Tyagi.

Prashant Kishor, who is an election strategist and close aide of Nitish Kumar, had two days ago opposed NRC, saying that it is a ‘botched up’ process meant to leave lakhs of people as foreigners in their own country.

Worry within RJD as Tejashwi Yadav stays away from action

Source: indianexpress.com

The meeting of RJD’s legislature party was cancelled on Saturday, reportedly because Leader of Opposition in Assembly Tejashwi Yadav was not going to attend it. This comes a day after former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi said on Friday that Tejashwi would attend the meeting on Saturday. On Friday, 66 of the party’s 81 MLAs attended the meeting.

Tejashwi has been mostly missing from the political scene after the Lok Sabha results in which the RJD drew a blank. He attended the just-concluded Assembly proceedings only for a couple of days, but did not take part in any debate. He also skipped the recent function of the RJD regarding its campaign to get new members.

He has, however, been active on Twitter. He recently criticised the state government for the deaths of children in Muzaffarpur and Vaishali because of the Acute Encephalitis Syndrome and over its handling of the flood situation.

A section of RJD leaders are concerned with Tejashwi’s “growing disinterest” in state politics. An RJD source said, “He wants to be in full control of the party but he is not being allowed to do so. He has been upset at his elder brother Tej Pratap Yadav’s intermittent acts of defiance. He is also unhappy with some senior leaders blaming him solely for the party’s defeat. He wants his family to set things in order before he takes over reins of the party with full interest.”

Tej Pratap, who has floated apolitical forum Lalu Rabri Morcha, has been constantly throwing a challenge to Tejashwi’s leadership. “Though Tej Pratap might not have much support beyond the youth wing leaders of the party, his actions can embarass the party,” said a senior RJD leader.

An RJD leader said the rout in the Lok Sabha polls has dampened the morale of the party. “Tejashwi is not being able to take senior leaders along and to inspire confidence in the workers at the grassroots. His current silence is harmful for the alliance too. Congress is already talking about going alone in the Assembly polls,” said the leader.

While Rabri Devi allayed apprehensions of any split in the party during the meeting on Friday, senior RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh spoke about how the alliance with RLSP, Vikasshil Insaan Party and Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) did not benefit the RJD.

Party spokesperson Mrityunjay Tewari said, “The party meeting on Saturday had to be cancelled because of unavoidable reasons. Not much should be read into it.”

Statistics don’t lie: Why Bihar CM Nitish Kumar is miles ahead of other contenders

Source: dailyo.in

Though the Bihar Assembly polls are scheduled for 2020, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has already declared Tejashwi Yadav as its chief ministerial candidate. While it appeared a little hasty and ill-timed for a party that drew a blank in the Lok Sabha polls, many argued that RJD’s declaration was more for intra-party consumption, and not for the people of Bihar. However, RJD’s apparent taste for Bihar’s top job has prompted many backroom boys across political lines to take a closer look at the Lok Sabha poll results. This is obviously an attempt to find whether RJD’s desire carries any weight in Bihar and if the political pecking order in the state has any new entrant.

A fresh data analysis of votes has been pulled out to assess if the poll outcome also has some hidden meaning attached to it. While statistics are notorious for not telling the whole story, the data analysis of voting during the Lok Sabha polls in Bihar has really thrown up some surprising assessments. The biggest surprise first: The BJP, which bagged the maximum votes in the state in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, is not the biggest gainer if you compare performance of political parties during the last two elections held in Bihar.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP bagged 96,18,904 votes in Bihar. In the 2015 Assembly polls, the saffron tally was 93,08,015 votes. Clearly, despite their impressive showing in Bihar, having won all 17 seats contested in 2019, the BJP has gained just about 3.10 lakh votes from 2015. So, who is the biggest gainer in Bihar? The results of a data analysis — based on a comparison of the last two elections held in Bihar — are convincingly in favour of Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) or JD(U). In 2015, Nitish’s party had bagged 64,17,041 votes. In 2019, its vote tally shot up to 89,02,719 votes. If you compare the two performances, it becomes clear that Nitish’s party has added more than 24.85 lakh voters in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls.

The JD(U)’s leap of 38.73% over its 2015 tally is staggering. If we compare the votes gained by the two ruling parties in Bihar (JD(U)’s 24.85 lakh votes to BJP’s 3.10 lakh), it becomes clear that the jump in Nitish’s vote tally is eight times more than that of the BJP. More surprises come to fore when the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)’s vote tally of 2019 is compared to the number of votes it polled in 2015. The RJD bagged 62,70,107 votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls compared to 69,95,509 votes in the 2015 Assembly polls. So, the RJD has lost just 7.25 lakh votes in 2019 against its performance in 2015. The figure, however, also reveals a significant insight.

While the JD(U) has raised its vote tally by nearly 39% over its 2015 performance, its electoral gains have not come from the losses of its opponents. The majority of additional votes that Nitish’s party has gained in Bihar appear to have come from new voters. Incidentally, since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Bihar has topped the country’s tally when it comes to adding new voters to the electoral roll. The figure for new voters in Bihar was 61,33,940, whereas West Bengal with 55.02 lakh new voters and Rajasthan with 43.45 lakh new voters, were second and third, respectively. 

“Assuming that about 60% of Bihar’s new voters actually voted in the Lok Sabha polls, the number comes up to 36 lakh. If we place this figure against the 24.85 lakh new votes that Nitish Kumar’s party has added to its kitty in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, it seems that nearly 70% of the new voters have voted for JD(U),” says a senior IAS officer. “It is clear. While JD(U) has kept its support base intact, it has also added majority of the new voters in Bihar to its vote tally. The reasons are abundantly clear. The new voters, the youth of Bihar, are smart enough to identify the leader whom they can count on for vision and leadership,” says JD(U) spokesman Rajeev Ranjan Prasad. “They [Bihari youth] can differentiate between a run-of-the-mill politician and a statesman like Nitish Kumar”.

“This explains why majority of the new voters have voted for the chief minister’s party,” Prasad adds. The assumptions are well supported by Bihar’s electoral record as Nitish has, indeed, remained the fulcrum of Bihar politics since his party defeated Lalu Prasad’s RJD in the October 2005. From 2005 to 2019, Bihar has seen four Assembly and three Lok Sabha polls. Barring the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the winner always had Nitish by his side in six of those seven elections. Though Nitish always talks about pooling all sections together, JD(U) sources admit that around 30% extremely backward castes (EBCs), and 15 per cent Mahadalits (the most marginalised among the Scheduled Castes) form the nucleus of the JD(U)’s strength.

Together, these two social sections have over 150 castes, constituting nearly 45% voters in Bihar. If RJD’s solid support base among the Yadavs, the single-largest caste group in Bihar with 14% of the population, combined with a sizeable chunk of 16% Muslim votes, has failed to stop Nitish in successive state elections, it was largely because the Bihar CM had similar consolidation of EBCs and Mahadalits behind him. Now, it seems the new voters have also preferred Nitish over others.