THE results of the by-election to two assembly constituencies in Bihar have created a political storm out of nothing. The two seats – Kusheshwarsthan and Tarapur – had been won by the JD(U) in the 2020 assembly election and the by-election was necessitated after the demise of the legislators due to Covid-19. While the ruling NDA constituents were united and put up a joint fight, the unity between the Congress and the RJD could not be sustained. The acrimonious accusations between the two parties came out in the open and after the declaration of RJD candidates from both the seats, the Congress also jumped into the fray and accused the RJD of not consulting it before. The Left parties were unanimous in supporting the RJD from both the seats, taking into account the poor show of the Congress in the 2020 assembly election. The Congress won only 19 seats out of 70 allotted to it and paved the way for the formation of the NDA government in Bihar. If the Left had got more seats to contest, the situation would have been different.

The victory of JD(U) was celebrated with much fanfare and the spokespersons of the party declared that Bihar has never seen a charismatic leader like Nitish Kumar and that Lalu Prasad and his family members are no match to him. In the din of such high-decibel propaganda, the real situation on the ground was not analysed properly. The mainstream media took a sigh of relief as the JD(U) could muster more than 3,000 votes in the last leg of counting to overtake the RJD candidate in Tarapur. The JD(U) had by then won the Kusheshwarsthan seat by more than 10,000 votes.

Despite deploying all its MLAs, ministers and MPs in each and every panchayat of the two constituencies, the JD(U) just managed to retain its seats, whereas the RJD, despite the Congress putting its candidates in both the constituencies, increased its vote share in both. Today election has become very expensive and even those regional parties who are out of power are no match to the party in power financially. Nobody would know how much money was spent to retain both these seats; how officials were made to serve the interests of their political masters.

The by-election results did not have any political significance so far as the stability of the present government is concerned, but certainly it is a shot in the arm of the JD(U) to proclaim that Nitish Kumar is the symbol of development. It comes following a Niti Aayog report which exposed the hollowness of development trajectory of the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government in Bihar and showed it its real place among the “BIMARU” states considering its tardy progress on social and economic index in the so-called years of two-digit GDP growth. Poverty and migration of rural youth in large numbers due to a crisis in agriculture, rampant malnutrition, infant mortality and depriving 80 per cent children of education due to digital divide and privatisation of education, health are the major causes of the weakening grip of Nitish Kumar on the general masses of Bihar resulting in reduced vote share in two of his strongholds.

The result has once again shown that the Congress has lost its organisational structure and mass base. Its newfound courage was not only misplaced but it was solely dependent on Kanhaiya Kumar and Jignesh Mevani who campaigned tirelessly in both these constituencies. The Congress could manage only 5,000 and 3,000 votes in these constituencies.