Advani, Shatrughan invited to Nitish’s oath-taking

BJP supporters then could argue that Nitish lost the elections the day he made a decision to give 101 and 41 seats to Lalu and Congress respectively (who had won only 22 and 4 seats in 2010) and chose to contest on only 101 seats despite having 115 MLAs.

Nitish had no love lost for the charismatic former CM Lalu Yadav, who is debarred from elections because of his conviction in the infamous fodder scam. It is a staggering victory for the “Mahagathbandhan”- the JD(U), RJD and the Congress combined. Fear of jungle raj may just deter a section of people from voting for Lalu as expected by political analysts.

In 243 member assembly, the Mahagathbandhan won 178 seats in which RJD got 80 while JD (U) managed 71 and Congress bagged 24. Coming from an internal source, obviously much venerated too, the charge that the hold of the Modi-Shah duo on the party has “destroyed” the basic character of the BJP can be no longer dismissed lightly. Incidentally, this year is the silver jubilee year of the “social justice” triumph in Bihar.

Underlining the unity among the Grand Alliance, Nitish said all its three constituents had shown a picture of harmony during its poll campaign.

He stated that the state assembly election, 2015, was a battle between the “forward” castes and the “backward” castes, that the ruling BJP was the political mask of the RSS, the right-wing Brahmanical “Hindutva” formation, and that Modi was its popular face. That is part of the problem, as well as the reason why the government and the party are likely to find it more hard to dismiss it as a few sort of aberration. It was believed that any association with Lalu would sully the Nitish brand. The meeting will be chaired by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Sinha had also said Bihar voters had understood that the announcement of economic package by Modi was a “poll gimmick”. There was no reciprocal comment from the JD(U) to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav who has, in the past two days, publicly spoken about the need for a “Mahagathbandhan” in his state. The consolidated support of just two castes/communities, namely, Yadavs and Muslims, accounting for nearly a third of the electorate could not be taken as representative of all the lower castes in a state where the total number of low castes happens to be more than two hundred.

The Bihar Assembly election has scripted a new grammar of politics in India.

Six, in a state which is deeply riven by caste and community identities, BJP’s experiment to counter it with development agenda has failed.

Eight, the rise in the price of pulses during the election has a lot of share in contributing to BJP’s poll defeat. But only soul-searching won’t help.

The Bihar election was a real zinger compared to other recent state elections. The party has to re-establish its strategy to fight West Bengal elections in 2016, Assam elections in 2016 and UP elections in 2017.