Bihar will be going into the Assembly polls in two phases, November 6 and 11, with results to be declared on November 14 – a battle with high stakes for everyone involved.
An in-depth look at the state of play in Bihar shows that each big player involved in fighting the polls in the State is grappling with its own issues, both internally and externally.
The field, so to speak, in terms of caste arithmetic has remained more or less static in Bihar over the past two decades, ever since the ascendancy of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Upper castes are largely said to be with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and non-Yadav OBCs, Extremely Backward Classes (EBC) and Mahadalits, along with a smattering of Pasmanda or lower caste Muslims with the Mr. Kumar-led Janata Dal (United). They largely form the nucleus of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
The larger group of Muslims and the numerically strong Yadav community is consolidated behind the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) with the Congress and the CPI (ML) having their own limited pockets of influence. They comprise the INDIA bloc parties.
In the middle are smaller parties like the Lok Janshakti Party, the Hindustan Awaam Morcha, the Rashtriya Lok Manch etc. which are with the NDA, and some other smaller caste-based parties such as the Vikassheel Insaan Party which are currently in negotiations for seats with the INDIA bloc.
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The Nitish factor
In this scenario, Mr. Kumar has been a constant, flitting between the two alliances, due to the nature of his support base, and remaining Chief Minister whatever the alliance.
Elections, however, have a way of laying bare struggles and contradictions between alliances and parties, and this Bihar poll is no different.
The biggest issue looming over the NDA, for instance, is Mr. Kumar’s health, and prospects of him continuing as Chief Minister for a full term if the alliance wins. For the JD(U), it puts a question mark on its leadership, and speculation over succession.
For the BJP, with the demise of its tallest leader in the State, Sushil Kumar Modi, there is a very visible lack of State-level leadership affecting its organisation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an important face, but the fact that Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary came from the RJD, and other leaders do not carry the heft of Sushil Modi is telling on organisational cohesion. The NDA, as the ruling alliance, therefore, is leaning on the women’s vote, which has been credited with ensuring the alliance’s victory in 2020 as well.
Programmes and income support schemes such as the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rozgar Yojana disbursing ₹10,000 per beneficiary to women for an entrepreneurial scheme, apart from pay hikes for local welfare workers and reservations in government jobs for women is an attempt by the NDA to create a “casteless” category of beneficiary or ‘labarthi’ voters among women.
Spectre of jungle raj
While the NDA is grappling with its internal issues and a nearly 20-year stay at the helm with its attendant anti-incumbency, the RJD has two fundamental problems. The memories of “jungle raj”, or the intense governance deficit faced by the State under RJD, remains a generational trauma, bolstered by the NDA’s campaign of reminding voters about it. Secondly, the party’s Muslim-Yadav support base, while dominant, has not, in the past two decades, been enough to push it over the half-way mark of government formation.
RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav’s poll promise of a job per household is a way of ameliorating that deficit as economic justice within the social justice matrix. A failure by the RJD to attain power in a fifth election in a row on its own will raise serious issues with regard to the party’s survival.
The Congress, declining since the late 1980s, overshot its mark in the 2020 polls by fighting 70 seats and winning only 19. This time around too, it is attempting a revival, with a 10-point programme aimed at EBCs, including additional reservations and a law similar to the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act.
In this status quo, the new disruptor, Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) and its leader, poll strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor may become an “X” factor. Having toured the State for three years and launching his party thereafter, Mr. Kishor says he will take the State to “Development 2.0”, from the governance blackhole of the 1990s to Mr. Kumar’s maternal welfare State of the past two decades, to a concerted effort to stem migration and generate jobs.
Both alliances are wary of JSP, a question mark hanging over whether the party will cut NDA votes, ushering the INDIA bloc to power, or the NDA’s hopes the other way around. Neither expects him to win power outright in his debut election. In either case, Mr. Kishor is expected to upend the status quo of the past 20 years.
Bihar’s polity has always privileged questions of social justice, with Mr. Kumar reinterpreting Mandal politics into gender justice and that of the EBCs within the larger OBC umbrella. The voters will decide whether the social justice juggernaut is ready for its next avatar.
Published – October 12, 2025 08:21 pm IST
