‘The BJP will contest on an equal number of seats; there are no two ways about it’.
Patna-based political observers have dismissed Janata Dal United (JDU) vice president Prashant Kishor’s demand that the JDU be given more seats to contest in the Bihar Assembly polls as “bargaining rhetoric” and claimed that the BJP central leadership does not take him seriously—that explains why no senior BJP leaders took cognizance of his statements.
Multiple Bihar BJP leaders whom The Sunday Guardian spoke to regarding seat-sharing arrangements for the elections scheduled less than 11 months away, said that there was no question of the BJP contesting on less number of seats than the JDU.
“Amit Shah has clarified multiple times that the elections will be contested under the leadership of Nitish Kumar. However, he has nowhere said that BJP will contest on less seats than the JDU. Prashant Kishor or any other JDU leader can say whatever they want. We will contest on an equal number of seats; there are no two ways about it,” a senior Patna-based BJP functionary said.
The BJP leaders said that the JDU was trying to punch above its weight while giving statistics that the BJP’s vote share in the three elections has been steadily increasing.
In the 2005 Assembly elections, the BJP got 26.86 lakh votes (11% vote share), 47.90 lakh votes (16.50%) in 2010 which almost got doubled to 93 lakh (24.4%) in 2015. The total votes polled in 2015 was 3.76 crore (the number of seats that the BJP contested in 2015 was 160, roughly 50 more than what it contested in the previous two elections).
In comparison, the JDU got 35.64 lakh votes (14.55%) in 2005, 65.61 lakh (22.58%) in 2010 and 64.61 lakh (16.8%) in 2015.
“This time, the anti-incumbency against Nitish Kumar is more and I can guarantee you that his vote share will go down even more. It is he who needs us more, not the other way round. Their election strategists, too, could not stop the vote share of JDU from falling by almost 6% (2010 and 2015 elections). We have been telling this repeatedly that this is a golden phase for us and we need to emerge as the number one choice for the people of Bihar, but it seems the central leadership is living in a different world,” a senior BJP leader from the state said.
According to BJP leaders, the party’s performance in 2015 where it could only win on 53 seats should not be taken as the benchmark. “Nitish Kumar’s name does not inspire the same confidence it used to earlier. The ‘sushasan’ tag does not generate the same ring now. We all saw how Patna became a stinking Venice and even our own leader (Sushil Modi) was marooned on the roads. The BJP is a national party and it should start acting like one. Too much weightage is being given to the JDU by our leaders which is allowing a political novice like Kishor to give us directions and make fun of someone as senior as Sushil Modi,” another party MLC said.
However, another party leader said that it would be wrong to say that the BJP can win the elections on its own in the state.
“We do not have the required caste pull with us. Our traditional voters are the forward and the baniyas. Nitish Kumar brings the rest. In the 2019 general elections, even Yadavs voted for the NDA because they had Modi in mind. However, when they go out to vote in the Assembly elections, they will have Tejashwi Yadav as the CM face in mind and hence we are unlikely to get their support in the manner we got in May 2019. Between themselves, Muslims, Yadavs and Kushwahas constitute almost 35-40% votes in the state. BJP on its own cannot bring in votes from these three communities and hence we also need Nitish Kumar,” the party leader said.
According to him, the backlash over the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the loss in Maharashtra and Jharkhand and the lack of a dynamic leadership in Bihar had also made the BJP subservient to the JDU. “If we compete alone, we might not cross 60 seats and if Nitish Kumar contests alone, his party will not win even on 25 seats. So the truth is that we both need each other,” he added.
Prominent Kushwaha face of Bihar BJP and its state executive committee member, Ratnesh Kushwaha, said that there was no dispute between the two alliance partners. “Where is the question of dispute? Our party president has already clarified that we will contesting the elections with Nitish Kumar as the face. As for seat arrangements, the party leadership will take the decision at the appropriate time,” he said.