The NDA alliance in Bihar election won a mandate a third time (In 2015 the JDU, RJD and Congress had fought together and won a mandate) winning 125 seats out of the 243 seat Bihar Assembly. The RJD, from the time it seemed they would end up on the loosing side are taking an inspiration from the American Elections to portray this election as a fraud to suppress voter’s voice. Although RJD did end up winning 75 seats and becoming the single largest party, many critics believe that it was Congress that brought down the Mahagathbandhan short of majority. While giving Congress 70 seats was a decision by Tejaswi Yadav opposing to that of Lalu Yadav who had proposed a 50 seats share for Congress. The Mahagathbandhan winning 110 seats in the Elections and falling just short of majority mark after losing few seats to NDA from a very less margin (as less as 12 seats in Hilsa constituency in Nalanda) is being seen as a silver lining by the Indian Liberals and most media houses. But this is far from truth.
The Mahagathbandhan was able to pull this election so close was because of another factor, the Chirag Paswan led Lok Janshakti Party. Take an eample of Hilsa Vidhansabha seat in Nalanda district of Bihar. The winner Krishan Murari Saran of JDU won 61848 votes while Shakti Singh Yadav of RJD coming second with 61836 votes, a mere difference of 12 votes.The LJP candidate on this seat, Ranjit Singh got 17471 votes. If LJP would have fought the elections as part of the NDA which it is in Centre, then the vote difference would have been 17459 votes which is a comfortable victory margin. The LJP fielding candidates against JDU might not have been able to bring Nitish Kumar down, but it did help RJD and on few seats Congress and Left as well to overcome the challenge and emerge victorious.
It turns out that in as many as 38 seats, the LJP has polled more votes than the margin between the winning candidate and the losing NDA candidate or to be precise, losing JDU candidate as they did not field candidates against BJP. If LJP would have contested elections as part of NDA then, NDA as a whole would have won 163 seats according to the voting scenario in 2020 Bihar Assembly Elections. Now that’s a 2/3rd seat share. It would have been a complete sweep for NDA and the Mahagathbandhan would have been restricted to 72 seats, keeping the 8 seats won by others as it is. Now this wouldn’t have been an impressive performance given all that was being said about the crowds in Tejaswi’s rallies and Rahul Gandhi campaining for the Mahagathbandhan.
The Indian Liberals are trying to project Tejaswi Yadav as the new young revolutionary leader who is challenging the old customs and old leadership while providing a young and new vision. Yet, while fighting on 101 seats in 2015 RJD had won 81 seats and Tejaswi Yadav was the deputy Chief minister of Bihar for 18 months and yet he doesn’t have even a single accomplishment as the youngest Deputy CM of a state except the allegations of corruption against him. In 2020 however, with his young leader image, RJD was able to win only 75 seats out of 144 it fought on.
Taking an inspiration from Biden win in America, the Indian Liberals were praying for Tejaswi yadav to win, not because he had a great vision for the state of Bihar but what the Indian Liberal left and it’s supportive media houses could’ve projected a mandate for the failure of Modi’s policies and his management of Covid-19 as well as a mandate against CAA, Abrogation of Article 370, The ongoing tussle with China and everything in between.