The state has 40 parliamentary constituencies. Today, BJP is trying to repeat its 2019 performance, when it, in league with chief minister Nitish Kumar in NDA, as well as Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), then led by Ram Vilas Paswan, had won 39 seats.
But, already, the controversy created by Anand Mohan — the former Bihar People’s Party (BPP) chief convicted in the 1994 murder of the then Gopalganj DM G Krishnaiya — over the mention of the poem “Thakur Ka Kuan” by RJD MP Manoj Kumar Jha on the floor of the Rajya Sabha has put Brahmins and Thakurs/Rajputs in Bihar on a confrontation course. BJP will require imaginative political handling of the situation, observers feel.Not surprisingly, the common refrain of senior BJP politicians, including its state chief Samrat Chaudhary, was simple: “We will first study and analyse the details of the caste-based headcount, and then make our statement on policy perspectives.”
Bihar Deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav on Bihar caste survey
For the present, as party sources said, the state leadership is in touch with leaders like Union home minister Amit Shah on the matter, and that they hope the party central leadership might do something about the Rohini Commission’s recommendations on the need for a judicious division of reservation/quotas among the backward castes and EBCs in central government jobs.
Even on the face of it, BJP’s discomfiture is music for the six-party grand alliance comprising JD(U), RJD, Congress and three Left parties.
Their problem lies in AIMIM led by Asaduddin Owaisi, whose party had won six assembly seats in the 2020 assembly elections. Being a polarising ideologue, Owaisi’s party might just take away a segment of their Muslim support. It is another matter that five of the six AIMIM MLAs joined RJD, later.
There is no report of economically, socially backward classes: Samrat Chaudhary on Bihar Caste-Based Census
In the circumstances, in Bihar, BJP might have to walk the extra mile to win over other smaller parties not in NDA, like Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) led by former minister and MLC from the BJP quota Mukesh Sahani. The count of his caste-based kindred groups, like the Kewats (boatmen) and Mallahs (fishermen), is 3.3%.
BJP might also have to draw up a strategy to build better chemistry with its supporting parties.
Also, BSP chief Mayawati, whose support lies among the Chamar and Mochi castes from the SC segment, will also queer the pitch for BJP. She is outside NDA, and caste-based support for her party stands at 5.3% of the total population.