Bihar: Caste is still king

At the surface level, the Bihar Lok Sabha results look pretty one-sided — both the BJP and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) got 12 seats each, while Tejashwi Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which led the INDIA bloc’s charge in the state, had only four. How accurate a picture does the seat distribution paint of how people voted in the state?

Turns out that for the 12 seats the BJP won in Bihar, it polled 20.52 per cent of the vote while the JD(U) won the same number of seats with 18.52 per cent votes. Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), or LJPRV, polled just 6.47 per cent of the votes for five seats! While Tejashwi’s RJD polled 22.14 per cent votes — higher than both the BJP and the JD(U) — for just four seats. The RJD’s vote share was up seven percentage points over 2019 while the BJP’s declined marginally (it had 23.57 per cent in 2019).

Half the winners in 2024 are from the OBC (Other Backward Classes) and EBC (Extremely Backward Classes) communities, who together comprise 63 per cent of the state’s population, according to the caste survey conducted last year.

Caste is clearly king in Bihar.

Among the 12 winners from the upper castes, six are Rajputs and three Bhumihars. Nitish Kumar proved that he is still popular among large sections of the OBCs, Dalits and Muslims. The performance of the JD(U), deemed to be the weakest link in the NDA, was quite remarkable, while Chirag Paswan’s LJP (Ram Vilas) seems to have gained from the Dalit vote and a general draught towards the NDA.

The four seats that went to the RJD are: Aurangabad, Jehanabad, Buxar and Pataliputra. The Congress improved its tally from one seat in 2019 to three this time (Kishanganj, Katihar and Sasaram), with a vote share of 9.2 per cent. The CPI(ML)(L), also a part of the INDIA bloc, bagged the seats of Ara and Karakat.

The Dalit factor and the LJP

The victory of all five Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) candidates came as a big surprise. The LJP, established by former Union minister late Ram Vilas Paswan, split into two factions — one led by his son Chirag, the other by his brother. The Dalits defied predictions that their votes will get divided by rallying round Chirag (who won by a margin of 1.7 lakh votes).

Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM), the other Dalit constituent of the NDA, led by former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, won the solitary seat it contested (the Gaya reserved seat). Nitish Kumar was convinced that Chirag Paswan, who contested independently in the 2020 assembly election, had fielded candidates to damage the prospects of the JD(U). Rumours were rife that JD(U) workers were undermining LJP candidates to settle scores with Chirag.

But the results indicate that these hostilities did the two parties no damage. Shashi Kant Paswan, Dalit activist and professor of economics in Jagat Narain Lal College, Khagaul (Patna) said, “In Bihar, a large number of Dalits still don’t know what the Constitution is, or what reservation or affirmative action mean. All you’ll hear them say is: Modiji has given us 5 kg of foodgrains. So, unlike Uttar Pradesh, the Constitution question did not become an electoral issue here.”

Satya Narain Madan, convenor of Loktantrik Jan Pahal says: “In UP, Dalits are slightly better off and have witnessed change. Kanshi Ram contributed to their awakening. In Bihar, no Dalit leader launched any movement for a big transformation.”

Sabotage and internal differences

There is a general feeling that the INDIA bloc lost several seats by a small margin because of internal differences and organisational deficiencies. This is not confined to Purnea — where Pappu Yadav won as an Independent by over 23,000 votes — or Siwan, where Hena Shahab lost to JD(U)’s Vijay Lakshmi Kushwaha.

In Araria, where Muslims comprise 42 per cent of the population, the sitting BJP MP Pradeep Kumar Singh defeated RJD’s Shahnawaz Alam by 20,094 votes, partly because five other Muslim candidates together garnered 41,000 votes. In Saran, Rohini Acharya’s defeat by 13,661 votes to Rajiv Pratap Rudy of the BJP is also being attributed to Yadav and Muslim candidates taking more than 35,000 votes. Rohini, the second daughter of Lalu Prasad, lost by the narrowest margin in the state.

Several observers claim that EBC and Dalit voters were undecided till the last moment whether to vote for the RJD or JD(U), but ultimately threw their lot behind Nitish Kumar, who had carved out a substantial vote bank among them during his first term as chief minister (2005–2010).