On the eve of the counting for the Bihar Assembly elections on Friday, there were fresh fireworks in Patna, after RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav put out a statement on X saying the people of Bihar were “alert and fully capable… to deal with any kind of improper unconstitutional activity”.
The BJP said both this and a warning by a little-known RJD leader, Sunil Kumar Singh, of a “Nepal-like situation… if counting was halted like in 2020”, showed the Opposition’s despair as the NDA was set to return to power.
No matter how the results go, both Tejashwi, the Chief Minister contender, and JD(U) supremo and incumbent CM Nitish Kumar, can claim to have given it their best. Nitish, 74, and Tejashwi, who is half his age at 36, shouldered the bulk of the campaign for their sides, with 84 and 171 public meetings across the state, respectively.
For the NDA, the BJP bigwigs including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah as well as LJP (RV) chief Chirag Paswan pitched in; but for the Mahagathbandhan, Tejashwi did the heavy lifting.
Spread over two phases, November 6 and 11, the Bihar Assembly elections were announced on October 6 and had a brief campaigning window compared to other polls.
With 171 public meetings, sometimes 18 in a single day, Tejashwi was the most visible campaigner of the polls. Declared the CM face by the Mahagathbandhan, after the Congress ceded on the issue to keep the alliance on track, the RJD leader (and de-facto party chief) focused on unemployment, education and youth issues, promising the people of Bihar “change” and “one government job per family” if elected.
The Mahagathbandhan’s failure to announce a formal seat-sharing, however, exposed the chinks in the alliance’s armour, with the bonhomie between Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi during the 16-day Vote Adhikar Yatra held in September absent. Gandhi and Tejashwi ended up holding only two joint rallies, in Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga, on the same day.
In all, Gandhi addressed 15 rallies between October 29 (his first meeting happening 23 days after the elections were announced) and November 9, the last day of campaigning. The Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha focused on “vote chori”, unemployment, inflation, and “failures” of the NDA governments in the state and at the Centre in his speeches.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra held around 13 meetings, none of them with Tejashwi, while Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge addressed around six rallies, centred around Dalit and reserved constituencies, a party functionary said.
Though the top three in the Congress didn’t campaign for candidates of alliance partners, Tejashwi and other Congress leaders turned up for allies. Another star campaigner for the Mahagathbandhan was Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav. Though the SP did not have a candidate in the race this time, it has fought elections before in Bihar, where Yadavs form the single biggest caste group at 14.3% of the population. Akhilesh addressed 25 rallies, 23 of these for the RJD and one each for the Congress (Phulparas) and CPI (Jhanjharpur).
SP MPs Iqra Hasan and Afzal Ansari also addressed rallies, for the RJD, Congress and Left parties. At one rally, in Araria, Hasan shared the stage with Tejashwi. On the NDA side, Nitish defied concerns about his health by holding 84 campaign events, including 11 road shows, where he spoke about his government’s development and welfare record. Another theme of the NDA’s campaign was the “jungle raj” during the RJD rule under Lalu Prasad.
The other avid campaigner in the NDA was Chirag Paswan, who held 173 meetings, as per the LJP (RV), outnumbering all others. Not a part of the NDA in 2020, when his presence was believed to have damaged the JD(U) chances in many seats, Chirag got an unexpected 29 seats in the alliance this time. Firmly in control of the LJP now, with his uncle’s faction reduced to a non-entity, Chirag has a lot to prove in these elections.
Modi held 14 rallies and two roadshows, calling for continuity and stability, while Amit Shah conducted 36 public programmes, where he consistently attacked the Mahagathbandhan’s campaign against the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, saying it showed bias towards “ghuspaithiyas (illegal immigrants)”.
Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath was close behind Shah, holding 30 public meetings, where he raised Hindutva and law-and-order issues, and talked about his government’s “bulldozer justice”.
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh (21 meetings) and BJP president J P Nadda (15) also kept flying in and out of Bihar. Announcing its preparations for Friday, the Election Commission said counting will commence at 8 am, starting with postal ballots. The counting of postal ballots has to be completed before the penultimate round of EVM counting, as per a recent EC direction.
Bihar registered a historic voter turnout of 67.13% in these elections, held over two phases, on November 6 and 11.