: Opinion: Odds against BJP in Bihar in 2024 #IndiaNEWS #News By Arun Sinha It is going to be interesting to watch how the BJP navigates its ship through the strait the JD(U) storm has spun it into

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Opinion: Odds against BJP in Bihar in 2024 #IndiaNEWS #News
By Arun Sinha
It is going to be interesting to watch how the BJP navigates its ship through the strait the JD(U) storm has spun it into in Bihar. Although the party’s national core committee has said it will win 35 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in the State in 2024 — a valorous scream to Nitish and Tejashwi, Just watch, we are going to rule the seas — it is hard to tell what monkey games the Bihar waters might play with the BJP ship, with Modi alone at the wheel, without Nitish by his side.
For, the last time Modi was alone at the wheel was in 2014. He won 22 seats for the party. It would be hard to imagine that going alone again, after two consecutive terms that should cause some popular fatigue with him, he would be able to get 35 seats for them.
Going Alone Tough
Let us not forget that even the 22 seats of 2014 could not be credited to him alone. He had Ram Vilas Paswan, the leader of the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and Upendra Kushwaha, the leader of the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) by his side. They richly added Dalit and Kushwaha elements to the alloy of his 22 trophies.
Today Kushwaha is not with him, but with Nitish. His party has merged with the JD(U). The LJP has split after Ram Vilas Paswan’s death. One group is led by his brother Pashupati Paras, another by his son Chirag Paswan. If the BJP allies with one group in 2024, the other group will work against it. Thus the Dalit vote bank built by Ram Vilas would be splintered. Modi cannot hope to get the same number of Dalit votes he got in 2014. How can he win 35 seats without the Kushwaha vote and a much diminished Dalit vote?
On the other side, there would be a formidable alliance. Its pooled vote could be considerably higher than the BJP’s in several constituencies.
There were as many as 17 constituencies in which the combined vote of the parties currently allied in the Mahagathbandhan — the JD(U), the RJD, the Congress, the CPI, the CPI(M), the CPI(ML-Liberation) and the Hindustani Awam Morcha-Secular (HAMS) — exceeded the BJP’s by more than a lakh in 2014. In five other constituencies, the gap was between 60,000 and 1 lakh. In six other constituencies, it was between 30,000 and 60,000.
Past Performance
Going by the 2014 results, the BJP looks most vulnerable in East Bihar. In as many as 11 of the 12 constituencies in East Bihar (Supaul, Araria, Kishanganj, Katihar, Purnea, Madhepura, Begusarai, Khagaria, Bhagalpur, Banka and Jamui), the party or its ally was behind the Mahagathbandhan by over a lakh votes. If we also include Munger, where it was behind by about 74,000 votes, the BJP or its ally would not figure at all in parliamentary representation from East Bihar.

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