Patna: Low turnout of voters at the polling booths marked the crucial by-polls for 10 assembly seats in Bihar on Thursday being viewed as an acid test for the regrouped Mandal forces who came together after a gap of well two decades to stop the surging Bhartiaya Janata Party (BJP). An average 45 per cent of voters cast their votes in Thursday’s polling which was far less than the total voting percentage recorded during the recent Lok Sabha elections held barely three months back when long queues of voters were seen on most of the booths.
Although the polling passed off peacefully much to the relief of the Election Commission, the fast-fading enthusiasm among the voters stunned the poll panel. Of the 10 seats where by-elections were conducted on Thursday, Bhagalpur reported the lowest polling percentage at 36.
The 10 constituencies which went to re-poll today included Hajipur, Chapra, Bhagalpur, Rajnagar (SC), Jale, Mohania (SC), Narkatiagan, Banka, Mohiuddinagar and Parbatta — the last two being flood-affected constituencies where the EC had to arrange boats to ferry the poll personnel, security forces and also voters to the polling stations. The by-poll was necessitated due to the election of the state lawmakers to the parliament.
Although the by-poll is being held for barely 10 seats, it has drawn the attention of the entire nation given the fact that two major products of the Mandal politics — Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Lalu Prasad joined hands together after sinking their 20 year-old differences to defeat a surging BJP. The two were forced to come together after their humiliating drubbing in the just-held LS polls where together they could win only six seats out of state’s total 40 seats.
The by-poll is, thus, being widely projected as a referendum on their tie-up by the experts. A good performances in the elections will naturally boost up their sagging morale and encourage them to continue this alliance in the next year’s state polls as well whereas a bad result will compel them to rework their poll strategy for the future although the two parties have announced they will stay together in future no matter what will be the outcome of the polls.
Usefulness
The by-polls are also expected to drop enough hints about whether the Mandal plank will be able to halt the consolidation of Hindu votes in favour of the BJP or if it has outlived its usefulness. But the way the BJP has reacted to this alliance explains the restlessness in the saffron camp. The uneasiness in the BJP camp was obvious when the new BJP president Amit Shah during the party’s National Council meet held early this month came down heavily on his rivals alleging “hunger for power forced Nitish Kumat to sit in Lalu Prasad’s lap” — a charge stoutly refuted by the two Mandal heroes.
In a way, this is also going to be a litmus test for the BJP which faces the huge pressures to repeat its LS performance in this poll as well and go to the next year’s poll with a double enthusiasm and high morale to unseat the ruling JD-U.
Observers are of the view that the RJD-JD-U-Congress alliance looks more deadly than the BJP’s but the only issue is whether the masses too react positively. The BJP has its core support base primarily among the upper caste voters against a vast backward-Dalit support enjoyed by the two Mandal leaders. The main problem, however, is that RJD’s voters have been inimical to JD-U’s and do not see eye to eye. It will be interesting to see if the voters too come closer or still display the same level of enmity.
