Tejashwi looks to turn the tables on Nitish

Does Tejashwi Yadav have some cards up his sleeve for the Bihar Assembly polls that would make him a true inheritor of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s legacy? Going by conventional wisdom and opinion poll surveys, the dice is loaded heavily against Tejashwi, who neither has a formidable rainbow coalition against the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U)-BJP alliance nor the numbers on the basis of caste.

The ABP News-C Voter opinion poll aired shortly after the Bihar election schedule was announced has predicted that the NDA under CM Nitish Kumar will get 44.8 per cent of the total vote share and bag 141-161 seats in the 243-member Assembly.

But a significant finding of the opinion poll is that a whopping 57 per cent of those surveyed expressed dissatisfaction with Nitish’s performance during 2015-20 and want a change. About 45 per cent of the respondents termed Nitish’s tenure as poor, while 27 per cent rated it as average.

In 2015, Nitish had fought along with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Congress and some smaller parties, restricting the NDA vote share to 34.1 per cent. In 2020, the ABP News-C Voter opinion poll forecasts the RJD and Congress getting around 33 per cent of the votes. But what is crucial and intriguing in the poll survey is a kitty of 22 per cent of the votes, which it speculates, would go to the ‘others’, i.e. non-NDA, non-UPA groupings.

Though the opinion poll is silent on which way the ‘other votes’ would go, Tejashwi seems to be carefully working on the division of votes. The RJD-Congress chief ministerial candidate has a catchy slogan in place: ‘Tez Raftaar, Tejashwi Ki Sarkar’ and his strategy to part ways with Jitan Manjhi and Upendra Kushwaha appears to be a calculated one.

In his assessment, parties like Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) have a greater chance of making a dent in the JD(U) and Ram Vilas Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party’s (LJP) non-Yadav-OBC-Dalit vote bank than provide strength to the RJD-Congress alliance.

However, there is a counter-argument that of late (in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls), the extremely backward classes (EBCs) have been siding with the BJP in a big way. If these EBCs are indeed disillusioned with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, would they desert ally BJP too? Tejashwi is convinced that Bihari voters will vote differently in the Assembly elections as compared to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

There is a question mark over the continuation of Mukesh Sahani-led Vikassheel Insaan Party in the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan. Much like Rahul Gandhi of the Congress, young Tejashwi has little patience or the ability to tire out or cajole allies into swallowing a bitter pill. Both Sonia Gandhi and Lalu Yadav excelled in forging alliances and keeping alliance partners in good humour. But Tejashwi appears a bit haughty, far less accommodating and business-like. Vikassheel Insaan Party, for instance, has informally been offered seven seats or asked to walk away to the ‘others’.

Sources close to Tejashwi say that in his scheme of things, the seemingly unassailable JD(U)-BJP alliance would suffer from within due to caste contradictions. So far, the backward castes had an upper hand in the Nitish Kumar-led government but with the BJP coming on board, the upper castes have developed a bigger craving for Assembly candidature. But noted psephologist Prof Sanjay Kumar, director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), has observed in his recently released book, Bihar Ki Chunavi Rajniti: Jati-Varg Ka Samikaran, that it is highly unlikely that the upper castes which called the shots in the politics of Bihar from the 1960s to the 1980s would regain their position.

Tejashwi thinks there is every possibility that many aspirants at the grassroots level may fail to get JD(U)-BJP nomination. In such a scenario, parties like HAM and RLSP would happily give tickets to the rebel NDA candidates.

In fact, ticket distribution is crucial for both the NDA and UPA formations. It is generally accepted that Tejashwi’s own core vote bank of about 30 per cent, consisting of Yadavs and Muslims, is pretty solid. If the RJD-Congress gives a sizeable number of tickets to the upper castes, Dalits and non-Yadav OBCs, theoretically speaking, there is a chance of their vote share going up to 36 per cent. If HAM, RLSP and others act as ‘vote katua,’ as predicted by the ABP News-C Voter survey, the Bihar results can throw up a real surprise. It is worth remembering that Yadav and Muslim votes get distributed in Bihar across seats. If the RJD-Congress combine ensures greater turnout compared to some upper castes, Nitish Kumar, sitting pretty as of now, can get a jolt.

In terms of the seat-sharing formula, Tejashwi plans to make the RJD contest on 140 seats, leaving the Congress with 70-odd seats — against its demand for 90 — and about two dozen seats for the three communist parties — CPM, CPI-ML and the CPI.

Much has been said about the probable impact of actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s case on the Bihar elections. Some elements backing the BJP are busy distributing stickers seeking justice for Rajput among car drivers, rickshaw pullers etc. in Patna and elsewhere. Even Covid-19 masks carrying Rajput’s photo are available. But rather intriguingly, opinion poll surveys such as the one by ABP News-C Voter have been silent on the matter. Anyone familiar with the functioning of private news channels would find this rather odd.