New Delhi: Fault lines inside the Bihar BJP are coming into sharper focus ahead of the Assembly elections, with senior leaders complaining of their deliberate sidelining and the party’s traditional forward-caste base showing signs of erosion.
As the party grapples with faction feuds, caste disaffection, anti-incumbency and corruption allegations, it is banking on denying tickets to sitting MLAs, fielding heavyweight leaders and rolling out welfare schemes—dismissed as “rewadi” by critics—to blunt the damage and retain power.
Former Union Minister R.K. Singh and ex-minister Ashwini Choubey have openly alleged that the state leadership—comprising those they call “imported” leaders such as party Lok Sabha Member of Parliament Sanjay Jaiswal, former state president and present Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary, and present party president Dilip Jaiswal—are “conspiring” against them.
The former two leaders are referred to as “imported” by a section within the party because they were earlier part of the RJD and have not risen in the BJP through the traditional Sangh route.
According to both Singh and Choubey, who belong to the Rajput and Brahmin communities, respectively, repeated complaints from party workers over the past year against the “anti-forward” policies have been ignored by the central leadership.
The late Sushil Modi, who was among the tallest of the state BJP leaders for a long time, too had told this newspaper days before his passing that the team that had built and strengthened the party in the state had been unceremoniously sidelined by the “new” leaders.
Amidst the visible anger from those who still have their loyal electoral pockets and can cause electoral damage to the BJP, as was seen in last year’s Lok Sabha elections and the subsequent bypolls, the BJP is struggling to hold on to the forward caste and Brahmin vote, long a pillar of its support in Bihar.
Data from the 2022 caste survey puts forward castes at around 15.5% of the state’s population, with Brahmins making up around 3.6% of that number. Party insiders concede that the community’s disaffection has grown, as a result of which Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraj and Rahul Gandhi’s Congress will benefit in some pockets which traditionally have been a BJP bastion.
Last year’s Lok Sabha results reflect the slippage: in Sasaram, Buxar, Karakat and Arrah the party lost where it was expected to win handsomely.
According to multiple observers, both within the party and outside, the perception that the state unit has pursued an “anti-Brahmin” line has deepened. What seems to have aggravated the anger is that these concerns were flagged by well-wishers but have so far been ignored.
Compounding matters, Prashant Kishor’s series of corruption allegations against senior BJP and NDA figures—ranging from inflated ambulance purchases to questionable university approvals—while triggering defamation notices, has reinforced the perception of a leadership tainted by scandal, something that the ruling NDA has never had to face before in the state.
According to BJP insiders, the challenges are on multiple fronts, including anti-incumbency against its sitting Members of Legislative Assembly. Party sources suggest that to counter this, more than 20 sitting MLAs could be denied renomination, while sitting Union Ministers may be asked to contest the Assembly polls, a tactic the BJP recently deployed in Madhya Pradesh.
As of now, the National Democratic Alliance has eight Union Ministers from Bihar: Giriraj Singh (Bhumihar), Satish Chandra Dubey (Brahmin), Nityanand Rai (Yadav), Raj Bhushan Chaudhary (Nishad)—all BJP—and Jitan Ram Manjhi (Musahar), Chirag Paswan (Paswan/Dusadh), Ram Nath Thakur (Nai), and Rajiv Ranjan “Lalan” Singh (Bhumihar).
Apart from electoral management, the party is hopeful that its series of welfare schemes—including increasing the wages of blue-collar workers and other professionals, and the recently launched Mukhya Mantri Mahila Rozgar Yojana, which provides Rs 10,000 each through Direct Benefit Transfer to 75 lakh women in Bihar to help them start businesses of their choice—will be the game changer and bring the ruling National Democratic Alliance back to power.
The scheme, with the state’s Rural Development Department as its nodal agency and the Urban Development Department handling city areas, has already drawn over 1.11 crore applications from women across the state and is being described by party leaders as a tool similar to those applied in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra to return to power.
The Rs 10,000 largesse can be seen as the coalition’s “Brahmastra” (masterstroke), aimed at offsetting disaffection and the multiple challenges confronting the NDA in Bihar.
