Bihar: Mahagathbandhan allies pull out all stops to get poll arithmetic right

Having lost the 2020 state Assembly elections narrowly to the NDA combine, the Opposition’s grand alliance (mahagathbandhan) does not wish to leave anything to chance when Bihar votes for a new government less than six months from now.

A coordination committee to expeditiously resolve issues of seat-sharing and election campaign, a common minimum program among allies and a calibrated outreach beyond the RJD’s traditional Muslim-Yadav vote bank to attract Dalits, Extremely Backward Castes (EBCs) and even forward caste Thakurs and Bhumihars. All of this and more was on the talks table, on Thursday (April 17), when senior RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, the mahagathbandhan’s widely presumed CM face for the upcoming polls, held discussions in Patna with leaders of the Congress, Left Parties and Mallah community leader Mukesh Sahani’s Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP).

Finalising agenda

The crucial meeting came barely 48 hours after Tejashwi met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Lok Sabha’s Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi in Delhi. The meeting in Delhi on April 15, as per sources in both RJD and the Congress, saw the leaders finalise the “broad political, social and electoral agenda of our alliance” and also discuss “some concerns both sides had regarding each other’s functioning in recent months and also measures we need to take to ensure that the mistakes we made in 2020 (Assembly polls) are not repeated in 2025”.

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The Congress high command, sources told The Federal, assured Tejashwi of its “unwavering support and full cooperation” in charting out a joint mahagathbandhan poll campaign for Bihar, with a promise thrown in for good measure of the Congress’s “willingness to contest a fewer number of seats compared to the 2020 elections (in which the party contested on 70 seats but could win only 19) provided that its share of seats came from our traditional strongholds instead of constituencies none of our allies wish to contest”.

Ground realities

Sources said Tejashwi and Rahul agreed during the meeting that both parties as well as their other allies must be “mindful of ground realities during seat sharing negotiations rather than staking claim on constituencies to satisfy personal egos”. Rahul, sources said, has already told the Bihar Congress leaders to “not make unreasonable demands during seat-sharing”, advising that it was “better to contest fewer but winnable seats than asking for a large number of seats and losing a majority of them”.

A sign of most issues between the RJD and the Congress being ironed out during the discussions in Delhi came at the Patna meeting on Thursday when the Grand Old Party, alongwith the CPI, CPM, CPI-MLL and the VIP readily agreed to have Tejashwi lead the coordination committee of the alliance. “We may or may not formally announce Tejashwi as the CM face of the alliance but the fact that the Patna meeting was called by Tejashwi and that everyone agreed that he should lead the coordination committee unambiguously signals that it is he who will be the face of our campaign,” a senior RJD leader privy to Thursday’s deliberations told The Federal.

Bid to tap anger

Addressing reporters after the meeting, Tejashwi said, “This was the first meeting of all our mahagathbandhan leaders and we unanimously decided that we will raise matters related to poverty, unemployment, and migration (in our poll campaign). There is a lot of anger among the people of Bihar against the government, which has been in power for the last 20 years... we all agree that we have to get rid of this government and our alliance will work together toward their goal; the coordination committee will meet regularly and chart out all aspects of our poll strategy with unanimity”.

Sahani, who formally returned to the grand alliance at the Patna meeting, told The Federal that all allies will “nominate two members each to the coordination committee” and that “it has also been decided that we will try to develop a common minimum program with which the alliance can go before the people during the campaign”.

Seat-sharing formula

Sources said though “no discussions were held during the meeting on any seat-sharing formula”, this would be finalised once the coordination committee takes shape. “All allies agreed that we must finalise our seat-sharing arrangement within the next two months, less if possible, and quickly move on to the process of candidate selection once this is done... unlike in the past, all allies want to declare candidates well in advance, preferably even before the Election Commission announces the poll schedule,” a senior Bihar Congress leader said.

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It is learnt that the coordination committee will also try to work out a blueprint for “election campaigns to be held jointly by the senior leadership of all mahagathbandhan parties and also joint campaigns for traditional media and social media”. In line with his assurance to Kharge and Rahul that the RJD will not undermine issues raised by Congress leader Kanhaiya Kumar’s ‘Palayan Roko, Naukri Do' (stop migration, give jobs) Yatra’, Tejashwi made it clear that addressing the twin-challenge of Bihar’s rising unemployment and out-migration will be the central pivot of the grand alliance’s poll campaign.

Roping in RLJP

Another issue that the alliance’s senior leaders have been discussing, although little time was spent over it at Thursday’s meeting, is roping former Union minister and Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (RLJP) chief Pashupati Paras into the mahagathbandhan. The inclusion of Paras, younger brother of veteran Dalit leader late Ramvilas Paswan, into the grand alliance is aimed at splitting Dalit votes, particularly those of the Paswan community, away from the NDA, especially in constituencies that the ruling JD (U) and BJP are likely to spare for Paras’ nephew and arch-rival, Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party–Ram Vilas (LJP-RV).

Paras had been part of the NDA until recently but quit the ruling coalition over the “humiliation” he was made to suffer when the RLJP was left out of the alliance’s seat-sharing arrangement in last June’s Lok Sabha polls. The BJP had chosen to back Chirag, son of Ramvilas Paswan, over Paras and given five seats to the LJP-RV in the Lok Sabha polls, all of which the party won. The clean sweep by the LJP-RV cemented Chirag’s standing as the true heir to the political legacy of his father.

Cong’s Dalit outreach

The grand alliance is, however, hoping that the induction of Paras, along with the Congress’s aggressive Dalit outreach and the CPI-ML’s formidable clout in some Dalit strongholds, could collectively wean away some scheduled caste votes – the community constitutes 19.5 percent of Bihar’s electorate with the Paswan sub-caste alone accounting for over five percent – from the LJP-RV and also the JD (U) and BJP.

Senior RJD leaders conceded that attracting Dalit voters to the mahagathbandhan’s fold had been a sticky point for Lalu Yadav’s party because of the oppression that Dalits had historically faced from the backward caste Yadavs in Bihar. The Congress’s decision to appoint a Dalit – second-term Kutumba MLA Rajesh Kumar – as chief of the party’s Bihar unit was also a bid to reassure Dalits, already being wooed aggressively by Rahul Gandhi, that their interests would be safeguarded by the Grand Alliance.

Replicating SP’s strategy

A senior RJD leader told The Federal that the party’s top leadership was “aware and alive to the challenge we face when it comes to attracting communities such as Dalits and EBCs to our side because of the perception that our party will only work for Yadavs and Muslims”. This leader explained, “No matter what we say publicly, it is a fact that the RJD has been unable to win the trust of Dalits and EBCs who continue to strongly support Nitish Kumar (JD-U president and chief minister), LJP-RV and also the BJP... Paras may not be as popular as Ram Vilas Paswan or even Chirag Paswan but he may still be able to break away some Paswan votes while the Congress and Left parties can also bring in Dalit votes and similarly, Mukesh Sahani, the son of Mallah, can attract votes of Mallahs (EBC)”.

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The RJD, sources said, also plans to “replicate the strategy adopted by Akhilesh (Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav) in Uttar Pradesh... like SP, we will also reduce the share of Yadav candidates to accommodate candidates of different backward and extremely backward castes while we are also hopeful that the Muslims, whose votes would get divided between our side and the JDU and LJP, despite these parties being BJP allies, will unite behind us this time because of the support Nitish and Chirag gave to the BJP for passing the Waqf Amendment Act”.