The Stage Is Set For The Assembly Election In Bihar

 

Patna’s skyline and landscape are so awash with political hoardings you’d think the Bihar assembly elections are next week (they are a couple of months away)

It’s a battle between a chief minister and a prime minister.The BJP’s reluctance to declare a CM candidate is less because of fears of infighting in the party and more because it fears it does not have a leader who could match the stature of Nitish Kumar in Bihar politics today. Not even Sushil Kumar Modi, who was deputy chief minister to Nitish until 2013

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s hoardings are huge, but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has five of them to counter one by the incumbent chief minister.

On Friday July 24,2015, a day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Patna, the hoarding wars got worse
The BJP unleashed a new set of posters across the city, this one promising a super-fast speed of development if the party came to power, and announcing half a dozen central government projects Modi is to inaugurate

The Janata Dal (United)’s response was to set the Patna Municipal Corporation upon the BJP’s hoardings, swiftly removing the illegal ones

The BJP’s prime strategy is to attack the JDU’s unlikely alliance with the Lalu Prasad Yadav-led Rashtriya Janata Dal. From 1996 to 2013, JDU and BJP were alliance partners, an alliance called off by Nitish Kumar because Narendra Modi wasn’t acceptable to him as prime minister. The Narendra Modi-led BJP won 32 of 40 seats in Bihar, with a whopping 39% vote share, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

In response to the BJP’s rise, Nitish Kumar has allied with his bête noire Lalu Prasad Yadav. For the ten years since 2005 that Nitish has been chief minister, he has pitched himself as the man who took Bihar out of Lalu’s “jungle raj”. Now, Nitish has joined hands with Lalu (and the Congress) to defeat the BJP.

The BJP’s hoardings attack this alliance. "Apraadh, Brashtachaar aur ahankar / Kya is gatbandhan se badhein ga Bihar?" (Crime, corruption and arrogance, is that the alliance for Bihar's progress?").While crime and corruption refer to Lalu and the Congress, it is noteworthy that the worst the BJP is able to accuse Nitish Kumar of is arrogance. They call him arrogant because he broke the “trust of the people” by dumping the BJP, an act for which Bihar’s electorate gave a suitable reply in the 2014 general elections.

The JDU has a one-word reply to everything, and that is Nitish. Nitish, Nitish, Nitish is the message of the ruling party. Its campaign strategy is led by Prashant Kishor, a key strategist of Narendra Modi’s 2014 campaign, who has now switched over to Nitish Kumar

JDU workers have gone across the state under a programme called “Ghar Ghar Dastak” (visiting every house) and for the first time, they weren’t telling people anything. They were asking – are you happy with Nitish Kumar’s performace? Will you vote for him again?

The election is 2-3 months away, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inaugural rally in Muzaffarpur on Saturday July 25,2015  will set the tone of the BJP campaign


Note

2010 Bihar Assembly Election Results