REPRESENTATIONAL IMAGE
With the Election Commission of India having announced the dates for the Bihar Assembly elections, the poll cycle of 2025 comes to an end. The voting for the 243 seats of the State will be held in two phases, the first on November 6, and the second on November 11, while counting will be held on November 14.
After the controversial special revision of the electoral rolls, 7.42 crore voters have remained, of which 3.92 crore are men and 3.5 crore women. Poll experts anticipate that the main contest will be between the ruling alliance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal United (JD-U), and the Mahagathbandhan led by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress.
No matter that political bigwigs from the national parties have already descended upon Bihar in strength, aware as they are as to how critical these elections are, the main protagonists in the fray are two, along with a possible dark horse on the sidelines.
One of these, of course, is that ‘great survivor’ Nitish Kumar, the 74-year-old chief of Janata Dal (United), who has been Bihar’s Chief Minister for two decades, despite having a dubious record as an ideological chameleon! Seeing that the BJP has so far not named an alternative, it effectively means Nitish Kumar will be leading the coalition into the elections.
The sole other leader capable of stopping Nitish Kumar from becoming the Chief Minister for a record 10th time is 35-year-old Tejashwi Yadav, son of RJD founder and veteran politician Lalu Prasad Yadav. It may be recalled that in the 2020 elections, under the leadership of Tejashwi, the RJD had won 75 of the 144 seats it contested, emerging as the single-largest party in the Assembly, but was unable to form the government because its ally, the Congress, failed to live up to expectations.
This time around, the Bihar election scenario has been rendered slightly complicated by election strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor, with his Jan Suraaj Party also throwing its hat into the ring, but most analysts consider him to be a political nonentity incapable of affecting the ultimate results in any significant manner.
The opinion polls have already started to air their predictions, never mind that the actual polls are about a month away, with one of these projecting a commanding lead for the BJP-JD(U) with 49 per cent vote share and 150-160 seats, leaving the RJD-Congress alliance way behind. But the Indian voters have a propensity to spring surprises, thus it would be a foolhardy soothsayer to make any prediction so early on. However, one prediction, that there would be heavy polling, seems to have hit the mark since observers expect record-breaking numbers in the Bihar polls.