Jokihat by-poll result shows Tejashwi Yadav's coming of age and a moral victory for Lalu Prasad
Lalu Prasad is currently on bail for medical reasons and not involved in direct political activities
Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal on Thursday (May 31) registered a huge moral victory by wresting the Jokihat Assembly seat in Bihar from the ruling Janata Dal (United) in the by-election. Already the single largest party in the Bihar Assembly, the RJD now has 81 legislators in the 243-member Assembly. (The JD(U) has 70 MLAs, RJD ally Congress 27 and JD(U) ally BJP has 53 legislators.)
The by-poll was necessitated after the seat fell vacant in March this year following sitting JD(U) legislator Sarfaraz Alam's switch over to the RJD to successfully contest the by-poll for Araria Lok Sabha seat, which had fallen vacant after the death of his father and sitting MP, Taslimuddin. In Jokihat, the RJD had fielded Sarfaraz Alam’s younger brother Shahnawaz Alam, who defeated JD(U) candidate Murshid Alam by more than 40,000 votes.
The poll outcome has further cemented the RJD’s Muslim-Yadav vote base. Of the 2.70 lakh voters in the Assembly segment, around 1.75 lakh voters are Muslims. Though not much appears to have changed after the results were announced as the ruling JD(U)-BJP-LJP alliance still has a simple majority in Bihar Assembly, a deeper look surely reveals worrying signs for the Nitish Kumar-led alliance in Bihar.
Unlike the March 2018 by-polls, when the NDA could not wrest Jehanabad Assembly and Araria Lok Sabha seats from the RJD, they still had the consolation that these two were not their sitting seats. But Jokihat was a seat held by the ruling JD(U), which the party had won in 2010 and 2015, which is why the poll outcome is of huge symbolic value.
The major takeaway from the poll outcome is that the result has not only robbed the NDA of its perceived invincibility tag and placed young Tejashwi Yadav as a leader in his own right, it also proved that Lalu Prasad, currently on bail on medical grounds and not involved in direct political activities, still remains an electoral force.
From 2005 to 2013, when Nitish Kumar ran a coalition government with the BJP in Bihar, the two parties had a fully synchronised coordination mechanism, which helped them sweep the 2009 Lok Sabha and the 2010 Assembly polls in Bihar. The invincible electoral structure came undone in June 2013 when Nitish moved away from the BJP, and the two parties failed to resurrect it even after July 2017 when the chief minister once again entered into an alliance with the saffron party.
The proof of it is clearly reflected in the by-poll results in Bihar. With its defeat in Jokihat, the ruling NDA has lost three out of the four seats (three Assembly and one Lok Sabha) that have witnessed by-poll in Bihar, after Nitish Kumar dumped the grand alliance and joined hands with the BJP to form an alternative government in July 2017.
In March this year, when Bihar witnessed by-polls for two Assembly and one Lok Sabha seats, the poll outcome had backed status quo, with RJD retaining Jehanabad Assembly and Araria Lok Sabha seat while the BJP held on to its Bhabhua Assembly seat.
The March by-polls were the first elections held in Bihar after Nitish Kumar snapped ties with the mahagathbandhan. The Jokihat result has further placed the RJD head and shoulders above the rest in Bihar.
“Prior to 2013, when the Nitish-BJP magic worked wonderfully in Bihar, the post-Mandal aura around Lalu seemed to have ebbed and he was being seen as a leader of just Muslims and Yadavs. But after his successive convictions in fodder scam case, coupled with the emergence of Tejashwi as a worthy successor, the RJD appears to be riding a sympathy wave that has regenerated Lalu's image as a messiah of the poor who has been victimised," said a senior RJD leader.
The defeat, however, is not of Nitish alone, as the BJP too clearly failed to galvanise its traditional supporters among traders who are said to be unhappy about the GST. The middle class, too, have developed cold feet over rising prices.
(Coutesy of Mail Today)