Eyeing 2024, Bihar parties start setting their caste equations right

Patna: In view of the Lok Sabha elections 2024, the political parties of Bihar are making strategies according to the strength of castes and communities.

In Bihar, Yadavs are considered as the biggest caste but when it comes to the Lok Sabha elections, only five Yadav candidates had won in the 2019 polls.

The people of the Rajput caste have lower numbers compared to Yadavs, Kushwaha, Muslims and even Kurmis but seven Rajput candidates had won in 2019 and reached the Lok Sabha. Among them, five belong to the BJP and two to the JD-U.

After the release of Bahubali don Anand Mohan Singh, the BJP claimed that the Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) leaders will not benefit from their moves as a large number of Rajput leaders are already present in his party.

"The RJD and JD-U alliance is determined to fight the 2024 Lok Sabha poll with the appeasement of Muslims and a caste based strategy. On the other hand, the BJP is against the criminalisation of politics. So our agenda is clear but whatever efforts are made by the leaders of the Mahagathbandhan through criminalising politics will prove futile," said Nikhil Anand, national general secretary of the BJP.

The Mahagathbandhan government in Bihar took a big gamble with the release of Anand Mohan to strengthen its position among the Rajput community in the state.

For the BJP there is Sushil Kumar Singh, a prominent Rajput leader representing Aurangabad, former Union minister Radha Mohan Singh from Motihari, another ex Union minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy from Saran, Janardan Singh Sigriwal from Maharajganj and RK Singh from Arrah Lok Sabha constituency.

On the other hand, the JD-U has Kavita Singh, wife of Ajay Singh from Siwan and Veena Devi from Vaishali who won the Lok Sabha poll on the ticket of the Lok Janshakti Party and is now with Pasupati Paras's Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party. Sources said that Kavita Singh's husband is a leader who believes in chanting Jai Shri Ram, but at election time he may not be sure where he would go.

Keeping this in view, the position of the BJP led NDA is stronger than the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar. This could be the reason why Nitish Kumar and Tejashwi Yadav have taken the gamble to release Anand Mohan Singh by amending the prison law.

"The release of Anand Mohan has taken place as per the law. The Mahagathbandhan government has not opted for the move for political benefit or loss. The Bihar government has followed the rules of the Central government and removed one point which was marking differences between the common and important people. It has released 27 persons and Anand Mohan is one of the beneficiaries," said Mritunjay Tiwari, national spokesperson of the RJD.

The image of Anand Mohan Singh in Bihar is of a Bahubali don and the Mahagathbandhan which wants the votes of the Rajput community, batted for him. He could be influential in Saharsa, Sheohar, Purnea, Motihari, Maharajganj, Siwan and other Rajput dominated constituencies.

Bihar has 40 Lok Sabha seats and 6 of them are reserved for SC and ST. As per the 2019 Lok Sabha poll results, seven Rajput leaders had won the contest which means they have more than 20% seats despite their numbers being low. One of the main reasons for this is the unity among the Rajput caste. They strategically vote for their candidates while other castes may not.

The Patna High Court has put an interim stay on the caste based census and hence no one knows which caste has what strength. Still, there is an assumption that the Yadav caste has the highest numbers in the state.

The RJD is considered a party of the Muslims and the Yadavs. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, 5 candidates from the Yadav caste were elected. Three of them -- Ashok Kumar Yadav representing Madhubani, Ram Kripal Yadav of Patliputra and Nityanand Rai of Ujiyarpur -- are from the BJP and two MPs, Dinesh Chandra Yadav and Girdhari Yadav representing Madhepura and Banka respectively are from the JD-U.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the RJD did not win a single seat from Bihar. Its performance in the Muslim dominant Seemanchal area was also not good.

During the assembly election of 2020, everyone knew that the RJD failed to reach the majority figure only due to the Owaisi factor. When Asaduddin Owaisi is in the fray in any election, it makes the comfort level high for the BJP. They know that the Owaisi led AIMIM will cut the votes of the non-BJP alliance.

The AIMIM is expected to contest the Lok Sabha polls 2024 in Muslim dominant Kishanganj, Purnea, Araria and Katihar constituencies. Besides, it may also contest in Gopalganj, Siwan and Sheohar. So the road for the RJD is not easy in 2024 despite its leaders thinking that they are with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and also in power in Bihar.

Caste equation is a different thing and winning the election is different. Leaders of the Rajput caste may not be in a majority but they win as their voters are united while the Mahagathbandhan, and especially the RJD, is facing the challenge of not having winning candidates.

The RJD has Jagadanand Singh, the state president of the party, but he is continuously losing elections. His son Sudhakar Singh is not a trusted leader even within the RJD. But Bahubali leader of Vaishali Rama Singh is someone who may change the fortunes of the RJD.

For the JD-U there are leaders like Sanjay Singh, Lesi Singh and Manjit Singh but none of them has the capacity to challenge the BJP's present MPs. The JD-U needs a firebrand Rajput leader of the status of Anand Mohan Singh to make some inroads in the Rajput vote bank. The leaders of the Mahagathbandhan also know that people from the upper castes are traditional voters of the BJP in Bihar.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the NDA including the BJP, the JD-U and the LJP had won 39 out of the 40 seats of Bihar with the BJP getting 17, the JD-U 16 and the LJP 6 while the Kishanganj seat went to the Congress.

In 2024, if the BJP gets less than 17 seats it would mean that the Modi wave is subsiding in Bihar. On the other hand, if the Nitish Kumar led Mahagathbandhan manages to win more than 30 seats in Bihar, it will strengthen his position among the opposition parties.

The BJP has an alliance with smaller parties like the Chirag Paswan led Lok Janshakti Party Ram Vilas (LJPR), Pasupati Kumar Paras led Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (RLJP), Upendra Kushwaha led Rashtriya Lok Janata Dal (RLJD) and former Union minister RCP Singh.

The Mahagathbandhan has seven parties -- the JD-U, RJD, Congress, HAM, CPI-ML, CPI-M and the CPI.

The party of Mukesh Sahani has not shown its cards yet but his inclination is more towards the BJP rather than the Mahagathbandhan. Besides the Modi wave, anti-incumbency against the central government, inflation, Hindutva, jobs given by the Nitish Kumar government will also be tested. The BJP will go for a bipolar contest on the lines of Muslims versus Jai Shri Ram while the Mahagathbandhan will depend on raising the issues of inflation, job promises of the Centre and failures of the Narendra Modi government.