The 7.5 crore voters in Bihar will now have the option to choose from two big alliances and at least four smaller ones that have come up before the first phase of the Bihar elections takes place on 28 October.
Apart from the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that has the JDU, LJP (so far) and Hindustani Avam Morcha (HAM) in it, the other main alliance in the state is the Grand Alliance (GA) which has the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Congress and the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) (as of now) in it.
On Tuesday, one of the key members of the GA, the Upendra Kushwaha-led RLSP, left the GA and formed an alliance with the BSP and another local outfit, Janwadi party (Socialist).
Earlier last week, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Friday announced that his party will contest the Bihar Assembly polls in alliance with Devendra Prasad Yadav’s Samajwadi Janata Dal (Democratic).
Former BJP leader and Union minister Yashwant Sinha, too, is leading the United Democratic Alliance that has several prominent state leaders like former MPs Arun Kumar and Devendra Yadav, former Bihar Assembly Speaker Uday Chowdhary, and former MLA Naganai. Sinha has announced that this alliance will contest on all the 243 seats of the state.
The 7.5 crore voters in Bihar will now have the option to choose from two big alliances and at least four smaller ones that have come up before the first phase of the Bihar elections takes place on 28 October.
Apart from the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that has the JDU, LJP (so far) and Hindustani Avam Morcha (HAM) in it, the other main alliance in the state is the Grand Alliance (GA) which has the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Congress and the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) (as of now) in it.
On Tuesday, one of the key members of the GA, the Upendra Kushwaha-led RLSP, left the GA and formed an alliance with the BSP and another local outfit, Janwadi party (Socialist).
Earlier last week, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Friday announced that his party will contest the Bihar Assembly polls in alliance with Devendra Prasad Yadav’s Samajwadi Janata Dal (Democratic).
Former BJP leader and Union minister Yashwant Sinha, too, is leading the United Democratic Alliance that has several prominent state leaders like former MPs Arun Kumar and Devendra Yadav, former Bihar Assembly Speaker Uday Chowdhary, and former MLA Naganai. Sinha has announced that this alliance will contest on all the 243 seats of the state.
Another alliance that has taken shape in the last 15 days is the one led by former MP Pappu Yadav who heads the Jan Adhikar Party (JAP). This alliance, called Progressive Democratic Alliance (PDA) has three other political outfits, including Chandrasekhar Azad’s Azad Samaj Party, Bahujan Mukti Party (BMP) and Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) (PFI’s political wing) in it.
These small alliances, which are unlikely to win a significant number of seats, are likely to damage the electoral prospects of the RJD which is hoping to come back to power in view of the strong anti-incumbency wave against the Nitish Kumar government.
“All these small alliances will in the end eat away the votes, however minuscule, of the RJD and the Congress. This election is going to be a close one where even 500-1,000 votes will play a major role in deciding who wins and who does not. The RJD’s core vote-bank of Yadavs and Muslims will be the one that will be impacted by these alliances,” a senior Patna-based journalist said.
The LJP, which is a part of the NDA as of today, is also going to take a call on whether to stay or walk away from the alliance as the BJP has so far refused to give it more than 25 seats. Similar is the case with the VIP which has also been threatening to walk away from the GA if its desire for more seats is not accepted.
According to Patna-based political observers, it is common knowledge that the small parties do their best to contest on as many seats as possible with the sole intention to “sell” the party tickets to industrialists and professionals like doctors and lawyers. “They blackmail the larger parties to get more seats for themselves by convincing them that they can get 3,000-10,000 votes and then they sell it off to the highest bidder. The BJP paid a huge price for this in the 2015 polls,” the journalist quoted above added.