The Bihar Elections are another unfolding of a saga. A founder member of the NDA, the JDU, after a 17 year old tie up and a 12 year old government together decided to severe ties. The Namo wave sees its maximum impact here in the urban areas and BJP alone would have been a strong contender by itself for at least 50% of the 32 seats that were jointly won by the front in 2009. But the story didn't stop there. Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP, a staunch ally of the RJD and the Congress, decided to part ways and move towards the NDA instead. The Congress Party too settled with the alliance along with RJD, only with a good share of seats on its side. Nitish Kumar, having left with no ally in the state moved towards the third front and now has a tie up with CPI, which is fighting in 2 seats as part of that alliance...
The story doesn't end here too. Just one month before the General Elections, half a dozen MLAs of the RJD switched sides and joined JDU... the lone MLA of the LJP too joined JDU... but then 4 Rajya Sabha MPs and prominent figures of the JDU either quit the party or unabashedly joined the BJP. Even one of Nitish Kumar's ministers quit and joined the Aam Aadmi Party here and is posing a stiff challenge in a couple of seats.
While one can say, the Split in NDA would benefit the UPA here, also that the split in the secular vote is going to help the consolidated upper caste vote in favor of NDA is equally true. With ever increasing party hopping and poll rhetoric, the elections here are not just a triangular contest, but a funny circus to watch. It would be extremely difficult to analyse any trend here, apart from the fact that the Urban 12% voters of the state are definitely on the side of Narendra Modi. With that in mind and the combining all the opinion polls and correcting those, we come to the conclusion that the final seat tally would be:
NDA: 22
UPA: 10
JDU: 7
Ind and others: 1
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