New Delhi: The BJP’s push for emerging as the big brother in Bihar has been shelved for now after the party lost the elections in Jharkhand.
Bihar state party leaders told The Sunday Guardian that after the results of Jharkhand, it was a foregone conclusion that the party will fight the upcoming Bihar elections scheduled less than 11 months later, under the shadow of the Janata Dal United (JDU).
A Patna-based BJP leader, who is a senior functionary, said: “We don’t have anything which we can use for bargaining. Already, the top leaders are facing flak for breaking alliance with the All Jharkhand Students’ Union (AJSU) in Jharkhand; they will not risk pushing away the JDU in Bihar. Now, we will have to go by whatever Nitishji decides.”
The last time the two parties contested in an Assembly election together was in the 2010 when the JDU contested on 141 seats, while the BJP got 102 seats out of 243 seats in the state Assembly.
In the 2015 Assembly polls, which the JDU fought with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the two parties contested on 101 seats each. The BJP, which was in an alliance with Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) at the time, had contested on 160 seats, with LJP contesting on 40 seats.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the JDU had contested 25 seats and the BJP 15 seats, while they contested independently in 2014. In 2019, the BJP and JDU fought on 17 seats each, an arrangement in which the BJP had to sacrifice five of its sitting MPs as it had won on 22 seats in 2014.
BJP party leaders said that a few months ago, when party chief Amit Shah made it clear that the elections will be fought under Nitish Kumar, it was understood that with the BJP not pushing for the CM’s chair, the JDU will show a “large heart” and let the BJP contest on at least 125 seats, with the rest 118 divided between the JDU and LJP.
“Now that seems difficult. LJP has always been a hard bargainer and we don’t believe that it will accept to contest less than 25-30 seats. This leaves around 210-215 to be distributed between us. At the maximum, we are hopeful that we (BJP-JDU) will be contesting on an equal number of seats, if not more,” a party MLC said.
According to him, there was a very strong resentment in a section of party workers and grassroots leaders with the alliance with JDU, as many deserving candidates and leaders were, for years now, missing out on getting the BJP ticket due to alliance compulsions.
“In many seats, our workers prefer to sit at home as they know that the particular seat will go to the JDU kitty. As a result, in many seats, our organisation has become very weak. We have been saying this to our state leaders, but I am not sure whether it is being communicated to the top leadership or not. For how long will we depend on the JDU? For some reason, all the bravery of our national leaders vanishes when it comes to Bihar and JDU,” a party strategist rued.