Bihar: Results, Implications and Aftermath
THE Bihar assembly election is a watershed in the electoral history of our country. Conducted against the backdrop of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) announced on June 25, it laid out a new set of ground rules for adult franchise.
The debates in the Constituent Assembly, which framed the Constitution, had envisaged a democracy which was to be ‘by the people, for the people and of the people’. Electoral democracy was its cornerstone. It was premised on the legacy of the freedom struggle which underpinned the role of the citizen as its bedrock. Every Indian citizen was to have one vote, regardless of caste, creed, language, culture and origin. In order to hold the arrangement together, the Election Commission of India (ECI) was empowered as a truly powerful and independent constitutional entity.
The ECI was supposed to enable the citizens in deciding the future of the Indian democracy and its political system, by providing for two simple principles. Firstly, the electoral rolls will be drawn up by the machinery of the ECI itself without leaving it to the whims and fancies of political parties or governments. Therefore, it was incumbent on the ECI for the publication of the final electoral rolls and the individual citizen was not burdened with it. Secondly, though it was implied that Indian citizens would be appearing in the electoral roll as voters, the ECI was kept out of the task of determining citizenship. If any controversy arose, it was to be resolved in consultation with the Home Ministry.
For the first time, the SIR in Bihar deviated from these two basics. The SIR presumed that the voters would have to ensure their entry into the electoral roll by filling up an application form and even if there was no controversy, they would have to produce documents as prescribed by the ECI for eligibility to vote. This also interlinked the second principle as the documents prescribed by the ECI uncannily resembled the requirements of a National Register of Citizenship (NRC), as was envisaged by the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
By this, the entire controversy over citizenship which had exploded earlier and remained stalled because of vexed questions, was being re-enacted through backdoor. This led to huge protest in Bihar and the debate raged across the country. The principal problem was that there was no single document officially recognised for citizenship. The proposed SIR was implicitly rekindling the trauma over Partition. On close questioning, the ECI was denying the connection between citizenship and the finalisation of electoral rolls. But in effect, the changed focus was all too evident.
Therefore, sometime into the exercise, it became apparent that this was not an exercise to rectify errors of the electoral rolls, but one of mass exclusion and disenfranchisement. The draft electoral rolls and its final form has further intensified the controversy and the reduction in the number of voters is all too evident. The Constitutional underpinnings of the SIR process are yet to be clinched by the Supreme Court. It is obvious that the process led to a great deal of trauma among a large section of the voters. In Bihar, with a high proportion of migrant workers and the extremely short time available, this was bound to happen. The electoral rolls also saw a major increase in the proportion of women voters deleted, as also of those belonging to minority religions in the border districts.
Along with the SIR, the obvious question about the role of the ECI also raised major concerns. The conduct of the ECI made it amply clear that apart from ineptitude and lack of transparency, there was a clear bias to benefit the ruling party. This was evident in the manner in which the ECI monitored the Model Code of Conduct (MCC). The BJP-JD(U) government initiated the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana, just before the elections were announced, crediting Rs. 10,000 each to over one crore women. This large-scale direct benefit, in which Rs. 14,000 crores were immediately disbursed was too close to the election and failed to insulate voters’ choice from this act of a new kind of ‘state clientelism’. This was distinctly different from the past when poor voters were clients of individual parties, and candidates dictating overall political choice.
Apart from this, free power for up to 125 units, the tripling of social security pensions, and the creation of one crore jobs, were also promises made by the ruling alliance. Of course, such commitments were contrary to what Prime Minister Modi had been saying about ‘revdi’ politics and its impact on the future economic situation. Already, questions are being raised about re-drawing the MCC to include a reasonable gap between such announcements and the actual holding of elections. It is clear that such efforts actually diverted attention away from the long-term wellbeing of the people, but aimed to shore up public perception, particularly among those who were most distressed.
The election results have shown that paradoxically, while number of women voters have gone down, they have voted in comparatively much larger numbers and with more decisive impact on the final outcome. This trend had been emerging even earlier but, combined with SIR and the absence of relatively bigger number of male migrant workers, it has been further amplified. The disconnect from the actual issues of development is all the more evident, that despite Bihar lagging behind most of the major Indian states in terms of wage, income, employment, education, health and other social indicators, the corporate media in order to explain the results and the major victory of the ruling alliance was asserting that this was due to the record of development of Nitish Kumar’s government.
The fact remains that the ruling alliance had consolidated the caste-communal impact accentuated by the sense of insecurity generated by the SIR in large sections of the people who are distressed and vulnerable. The so called ‘vote management’, a feature attributed to Amit Shah, has led to decimation of small parties and independent candidates, and the vote they got completely gravitating towards the ruling alliance. Some of the smaller parties, though not making a major impact in terms of seats, but their percentage votes have adversely impacted the opposition. The high-profile campaign of Prashant Kishore’s Jan Suraj Party, or even the AIMIM in Seemanchal, are cases in point.
Everything said and done, there is also much to introspect for the parties aligned with the INDIA Bloc. While there is no doubt that there were several issues which affected the lives and livelihoods of the people, the opposition failed to galvanize the public opinion on them, to ensure that the ruling alliance could be pushed back. There are several factors which need to be studied more deeply and addressed collectively. The Left parties, including the CPI(M), had worked tirelessly and have received substantial votes. But that has not been translated into number of their Assembly representation. The future lies in the re-dedication to invigorating people’s struggles on issues that they face and the relentless political campaign against the Hindutva-corporate invasion with official complicity and the overall neo-fascist ways. The battle for a fair electoral system and a just democracy demands such a consistent struggle.
(November 19, 2025)
