Bihar polls: Make-or-break moment for key players

With the announcement of Assembly elections in two phases on November 6 and 11, Bihar has entered full-fledged election mode, and political parties are already ramping up their campaigns. However, NDA leaders are confident that their winning social alliance will remain intact and are hopeful that a bevy of development projects and welfare measures centred on youths and women, including `10,000 cash transfer to nearly one crore women, will keep popular support on their side.

The two alliances — the NDA and Mahagathbandhan — have fortified their coalitions with new allies for the Assembly election in which poll strategist-turned politician Prashant Kishor has emerged as the X factor with his assiduous campaign projecting his Jan Suraaj Party as an alternative to the traditional alliances.

The 2025 Bihar Assembly election is an obvious make-or-break moment for incumbent Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, with both his personal legacy and his party’s relevance on the line. This will be Nitish’s tenth bid for the chief minister’s post after two decades of rule marked by governance reforms, social welfare programs, and, of course, the dramatic alliance shifts that earned him the nickname ‘Paltu Ram’.

This time, voters will judge whether his image of the ‘Vikas Purush’ (development man), known for stability and law-and-order credibility, still holds — or whether political fatigue, policy stagnation, and repeated flip-flops have eroded his mandate. The biggest challenge Nitish will face is to fight the anti-incumbency wave. The biggest challenge for Nitish is indeed to combat the strong anti-incumbency wave against his Government.

Critics have claimed that Kumar is serving his last days as chief minister and the BJP will not continue with him at the helm even if the NDA were to win, prompting several BJP leaders to assert that he will be heading their next Government as well. Bihar elections are likely to settle the debate on whether the Opposition has finally found a potent political plank in its protest against SIR or it will be another non-starter for the alliance, as the ruling NDA looks to maintain its firm grip on a state which has stood by Nitish Kumar since 2005.

At 74, questions about his age and health have persisted, and a popular verdict will clear the air on whether the JD(U) president continues to endure as the talismanic helmsman in the State’s electoral battle or Tejashwi Yadav as the de facto face of the Opposition can trump the chief minister, a feat that eluded his charismatic father, Lalu Prasad Yadav.

Kumar leads a coalition, which includes a BJP more formidable than ever in the State, with a proven numerical advantage over the RJD-led combine that has the Congress and the Left as allies. Kumar, the longest-serving CM in Bihar, is one of the most influential political figures in the State, having maintained power for nearly two decades, largely due to a series of welfare schemes like 125 units of free electricity for domestic consumers, supply of potable water in rural areas, and one crore jobs and employment opportunities in the next five years. Notably, two decades in power have eroded the freshness of Nitish’s early years (2005-2010).

After almost 20 years in office, he will now have to fight the fatigue among the voters. Anti-incumbency could be a factor in the upcoming election.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s enduring appeal and Kumar’s longstanding goodwill despite some erosion are being seen as other factors favouring their coalition. The BJP, despite efforts to expand its social base, is still largely perceived as a party of upper castes or “forwards,” a term used by Biharis for the upper castes who, according to the survey of castes held a few years ago, account for just over 10 per cent of the population. Induction of turncoats is seen as a “polluting influence” by those in BJP. High command culture, once associated with the Congress, is now heard of in the BJP, too, which seems to have got used to power and its trappings.

The RJD is the principal force in the Opposition, and the BJP is seen to have emerged as the strongest NDA constituent in Bihar ahead of the JD(U), but both coalitions are beset with their own challenges.

Despite enjoying solid support from two biggest voting blocs, Muslims and Yadavs, the RJD-led coalition has been unable to draw enough support from other communities to turn the tide, with the BJP-JD(U) coalition being successful in reminding them of the perceived misrule during the RJD’s Government between 1990 and 2005 and the “good governance” of Kumar since to ensure continued popular support for him.

Except in 2015, when Kumar had joined hands with Lalu Prasad Yadav-led RJD, he has fought all assembly polls as part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Tejashwi Yadav has been trying to expand his coalition’s social footprint, and the alliance is likely to give poll tickets to a large number of candidates from Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs), which hold the balance of power and have more often than not backed the NDA, to ensure his party’s return to power as the head of an alliance after 20 years.

A large chunk of the EBCs and numerically weaker Scheduled Castes have been central to Kumar’s rise, besides Kushwahas and Kurmis -- two of the most numerous Other Backward Classes after Yadavs. He himself hails from the Kurmi caste.

The verdict will also be seen as a referendum on the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Review of electoral rolls in the state, an exercise which drew an energetic protest campaign from Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and backing from several regional satraps aligned with the main opposition party.

Rahul had led a two-week-long “Voter Adhikar Yatra” in the state between August 17 and September 1, but the jury remains out if his charges against the EC of “vote chori” in alleged collusion with the ruling alliance have found an echo outside the Opposition’s support base. The BJP-led NDA has maintained that the SIR is aimed at weeding out infiltrators, and the Opposition’s campaign against it is driven by vote bank politics.

In a State dominated by two political alliances for close to three decades, Kishor has woven a political idiom centred largely on substantive issues and alleged failures of dominant parties, but without any attempt to build a social coalition around castes, a rite of passage for almost every successful political party.

It, however, remains to be seen if that proves enough to earn his fledgling outfit enough popular legitimacy in an already fractured political field crowded with numerous satraps.

Union minister Chirag Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), which had walked out of the NDA in the 2020 assembly polls and successfully damaged the JD(U)’s prospects in nearly three dozen seats, is now part of the ruling alliance, and so is former minister Upendra Kushwaha. Kushwaha was heading another front that included Mayawati’s BSP and Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM.

The NDA had piped the RJD-Left-Congress combine to a majority in the 243-member Assembly in 2020, with 125 seats against the rival’s 110. Closer still was the vote gap as the NDA bagged 37.26 per cent votes against the mahagathbandhan’s 37.23 per cent.

Former minister Mukesh Sahni was with the NDA in 2020 but is now with the RJD, while Union Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi has remained in the ruling alliance.

The combination of the two main alliances was the same in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, in which the NDA had won 30 of the 40 seats and the Opposition 10, including independent Pappu Yadav.