The Bihar political scene is getting murkier and murkier. The BJP seemed to be on the ascendant when it clinched a seat-sharing deal with the Janata Dal (United) but events have taken a new turn with the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) led by Upendra Kushwaha walking out of the NDA and joining the UPA. The alliance between the Congress, the RJD of Tejaswi Yadav, Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) and the new outfit of JD (U) breakaway group led by Sharad Yadav bolstered now by the RLSP is preparing to give a stiff fight to the BJP-JD (U) combine which is no pushover in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. With Kushwaha breathing fire on the BJP, the stage is set for a titanic battle of high stakes.
It is a fact that Kushwaha was holding out threats of quitting the NDA for quite some time but the BJP, obsessed with retaining the support of Nitish Kumar’s JD (U) at all costs made short shrift of his threats. Now, it is having to pay the price for neglecting smaller allies.
The 50:50 formula for seat sharing worked out between the BJP and the JD (U) left little for the smaller parties and the displacement of BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhatisgarh rekindled hope in the likes of Kushwaha that he could strike a better bargain with the Congress than with the BJP. How efficacious the new ‘Mahagathbandhan’ would prove to be is still to be tested but there can be little doubt that psychologically the BJP has suffered a perceptible erosion in its credibility. While the odds are in favour of the BJP retaining the alliance with the Paswans (Ram Vilas and son Chirag) the latter would predictably extract their pound of flesh knowing the desperate state in which the BJP now is in. All in all, a prestige battle lies ahead in the electorally-crucial state of Bihar for all political players.
