NDA Slightly Ahead as Suggested in the India Today-Cicero Bihar Exit Poll.
The BJP+ alliance is likely to win 120 seats and JD-U+ will bag 117 seats while others will get 10 seats in the Bihar assembly elections, according to an exit poll conducted by India Today and Cicero. Polling for the fifth and final phase ended on 5th November.
Bihar witnessed strong voter turnout in the fifth and final phase of the assembly elections with 59.46% casting their ballot.
The voting figures for each district are:
Madhubani 55.87%,
Supaul 58.60%,
Araria 62%,
Kishanganj 61.54%,
Purnea 62.95%,
Katihar 67.27%,
Madhepura 57.84%,
Saharsa 50.78% and
Darbhanga 58.27%.
Prominent personalities who cast their votes included BJP national spokesman Shahnawaz Hussain and JD(U) national president Sharad Yadav. Both leaders claimed their alliance will get a two-third majority in the elections.
This round of polling took place in some of Bihar’s most backward pockets notorious for high percentage of poverty, illiteracy as well as migration. The 57 constituencies that went to polls include 24 in the Seemanchal region bordering West Bengal and are spread over Araria, Darbhanga, Katihar, Kishanganj, Madhepura, Madhubani, Purnia, Saharsa and Supaul.
A total of 1,55,43,594 electors were eligible to vote to decide the fate of 827 candidates, including 58 women.
Nitish Kumar’s is a high-stakes, big losses or high-returns gamble in Bihar. He’d face oblivion if he loses. A victory would help him keep not just the CM’s office but emerge a challenger to Narendra Modi in the immediate or distant future. The pan-Indian dimensions of their provincial face-off are hard to ignore.
Modi entered the contest as a leader with no national alternative. A defeat there could rob him of that air of invincibility. This election result is seen as an indicator of the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who led the NDA campaign.
He’d continue to be PM. But the political consequences of an adverse outcome could be deleterious for his government—delay as it would the numbers it direly needs in the Rajya Sabha. A kind of throwback on the UPA-2; the spectre of an alliance in power standing on one-leg against an Opposition united to scuttle or block legislation in Parliament to show it as weak. Or inept.
Conversely, if Modi wrests Bihar, he’d be a super monarch. The GST, the land law and all other legislations stuck in the quagmire of adversarial politics will be in place. Opposition to him would evaporate within and outside the NDA. For, in India, leaders who win polls for their parties aren’t questioned. They’re obeyed.
Conjectures apart, Nitish’s hyphenation with Modi isn’t new. It started when he walked out of his 17-year-old alliance with the BJP in protest against the Gujarat strongman’s projection as its poll mascot. The saffron party cried foul, attributing the 2013 breakup to Nitish’s prime ministerial ambition shrouded in the veneer of ideology.