Small parties emerge as a big draw for the BJP in Bihar

Nitish Kumar, RJD and JD(U), 2024 LS polls

With the Lok Sabha elections barely a year away, smaller parties that are often lumped together as ‘others’ have attained the ‘significant other’ status for the BJP to take on the mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) in Bihar.

The BJP is now looking at these parties to upstage the ruling coalition led by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Janata Dal (United). They include Mukesh Sahani’s Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Janata Dal (RLJD), Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular), which is presently a part of the grand alliance.

The BJP has a history of such alliances in the past. In the 2014 polls, the party won 31 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in alliance with the then Rashtriya Lok Samata Party led by Mr. Kushwaha and Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP. While Mr. Kushwaha’s party won all three seats it contested, the LJP won six out of seven. In 2019, the BJP and its then allies — the JD(U) and the LJP — mopped up 39 of the 40 seats.

But times have changed, as have its allies.

Often accused of stealing the mandate by dividing parties and alliances in State after State, the BJP is smarting from the jolt delivered by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar last August when his JD(U) dumped it and joined hands with the RJD.

Threatened by the formidable social alliance of the RJD-JD(U)-Left-Congress combine that enjoys strong support of the Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Muslims, the BJP is reaching out to the four main smaller parties. In turn, these parties have started to throw their weight around.

“I want the same number of seats as Chirag Paswan if the BJP wants any pre-poll alliance. Without the mallah (boatmen community) vote, no alliance can win Bihar,” Mr. Sahani, who calls himself “the son of Mallah, told The Hindu. Mallahs are an EBC and a decisive presence in about a dozen Assembly constituencies of the Mithila and Tirhut regions in north Bihar.