Mandate reflects wisdom of Bihar, it’s the defeat of intolerance: Nitish Kumar
Agencies
PATNA, November 8
In a verdict that is bound to have a national impact, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD leader Lalu Prasad on Sunday trounced the BJP to win the bitterly fought Bihar assembly polls and deliver a major blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi who led his party’s challenge.
In contrast to what most exit polls had said, the Grand Alliance of the Janata Dal-United (JD-U), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress was poised to sweep a whopping 178 of the 243 seats, leaving the BJP - which wanted to oust Nitish Kumar - and its allies with just 59 seats.
By late evening, the RJD and JD-U had won 51 seats each and were leading in 29 and 20 respectively. The Congress had won 20 seats and was ahead in seven. The BJP was the winner in 35 constituencies and was leading in 18.
The much-maligned Lalu PrasadÂ’s RJD is tipped to end up as the single biggest party with 80 seats followed closely by Nitish KumarÂ’s JD-U with 71 seats. The Congress would get 27 seats.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s three allies - the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) and the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) - could together bag only six seats.
“This is a very big victory. We accept it with humility,” Nitish Kumar said in his first comments. “From the national perspective, the result is significant.”
Lalu Prasad, who the BJP targeted more viciously during the election campaign, was more emphatic. He called Modi “a RSS pracharak” and vowed to mount a nationwide campaign against the BJP-led central government.
Lalu Prasad also made it clear that although his party had more seats than the JD-U, Nitish Kumar would be the chief minister.
A sombre Modi telephoned Nitish Kumar and congratulated him. So did a stream of Opposition leaders from across the country, indicating that the ramifications of the Bihar outcome was already being felt.West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the BJP’s defeat was a “victory of tolerance, defeat of intolerance”. Delhi Chief Minister and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal hailed Nitish Kumar on “this historic victory”.
Kejriwal also said the BJP-led coalition’s defeat was a referendum on Modi’s “work and working style”. He added: “The results prove that people do not approve of the politics of hatred.”
The Shiv Sena, the BJPÂ’s junior but bitter ally in Maharashtra, said the BJP must accept that the defeat was Modi’s doing. Calling Nitish Kumar “a political hero”, it said the Bihar result “will be a turning point in the country’s political future”.
Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah too said that the verdict “will prove critical for the nation in the days ahead”.
Even as former BJP deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi said his party would be “a constructive Opposition”, Bollywood veteran and BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha - unhappy over being sidelined by party president Amit Shah - called the BJP defeat “a victory for democracy and the people of Bihar... The writing was always on the wall”.
The BJP conceded defeat. “This is not an outcome we expected,” its general secretary Ram Madhav said. “This defeat calls for serious thinking.”
RJD chief Lalu Prasad on Sunday rose like the proverbial phoenix from his ashes as he helped script a resounding victory for the Grand Alliance in Bihar and revived the fortunes of his moribund party.
On the verge of being written off as also ran after his party’s dismal performance in the 2010 Assembly polls when it was restricted to a humiliating 22 seats in the 243-member Bihar House, Mr. Prasad pulled off an emphatic victory for the RJD, which was all set to emerge as the table topper.
Ousted in 2005 after a 15-year stint in power, the 2010 poll defeat sent the man who once lorded over Bihar virtually to the doghouse.
The once seemingly invincible RJD, with its massive Muslim-OBC vote bank, was not even eligible to claim the Leader of the Opposition post as the NDA under Nitish Kumar won an astounding four-fifths majority in the Assembly, winning 206 seats and restricting the RJD to a paltry 22, the latter’s worst-ever tally.
Mr. Prasad’s conviction in a fodder scam case in 2013 came as a personal blow to him as it led to his disqualification from the Lok Sabha and a ban from contesting an election at least for six years.
The 2014 Lok Sabha election was a crucial test for the backward class leader which he was to lead as a non-playing captain for the first time.
The results came as another jolt to the RJD and Mr. Prasad, with the party managing to win only four of the State’s 40 seats.
The successive defeats, however, carried seeds for a future reunion with friend-turned-foe Mr. Kumar, whose JD(U) had also been humiliated in the 2014 election, managing to win just two seats after parting ways with 17-year-old ally, the BJP, in June 2013 over Narendra Modi’s anointment as the party’s campaign spearhead for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Acutely aware of Mr. Modi’s personal charisma and the BJP’s growing popularity in the State, they started moving closer after the Lok Sabha debacle.
With Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav playing the role of a peacemaker, the two backward class heavyweights resolved their differences and decided to contest the 2015 Bihar polls in tandem.
Mr. Prasad, the wily practitioner of realpolitik, after initial reluctance, agreed to accept Mr. Kumar as the Grand Alliance’s chief ministerial candidate.
