The results for the 2020 Bihar Legislative Assembly elections could declare not one but two winners. Exit polls have tipped the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan to eke out a victory but irrespective of the result, the outcome will bolster the prospects of the BJP while relegating its partner JDU to the margins.

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Bihar’s politics has undergone a sea change over the past five years. In 2015, arch-rivals Nitish Kumar of JDU and Lalu Prasad Yadav of the RJD came together to successfully stand up to Narendra Modi wave, which threatened to sweep every state citadel in the country.

The partnership proved short-lived: the rivals could get along only so much, and Nitish switched back to the NDA fold a few years barely a few years after he had walked out of it to protest the rise of Narendra Modi, previously considered his equal.

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Fast forward to 2020, and Nitish Kumar’s clean image of a strong administrator has suffered – thanks to his playing second fiddle to, in turns, Lalu Prasad Yadav and the BJP. And unlike the RJD, which enjoys the support of the dominant Yadav caste, the Bhumihar Nitish does not belong to a caste with a large voting bloc.

In the other camp, following Nitish’s 2017 switch, Lalu’s RJD appeared to be in completed disarray after the party patriarch was sent to jail in a corruption case. A sibling rivalry ensued between Lalu’s sons, from which emerged his charismatic younger son, the cricketer-turned-politician Tejashwi Yadav.

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Economically speaking, it was Nitish who was first credited with making a strong attempt at lifting the state from poverty. But over the past few years, while the state GDP has grown faster than the national average, it has suffered from slow agricultural growth as well as high unemployment.

The state’s per capita income is a mere one-third the national average, and agriculture, on which three-fourths of the population is dependent, contributes a mere 18 percent to GDP.

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It also doesn’t help Nitish that he is heading into the election right after the COVID-19 lockdown, which not only resulted in the loss of large number of jobs but also created a migrant crisis, as hundreds of thousands of labourers across the country walked back often thousands of miles to their villages in UP and Bihar.

On the election trail, Tejashwi underlined the lack of employment opportunities as well as the migrant crisis, attracting crowds that would even rival his father in the latter’s prime.

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And then there is another factor that has queered the pitch for anyone trying to guess which way the wind blows. After the death of LJP’s Ram Vilas Paswan, his son Chirag has taken on Nitish while openly supporting the BJP.

All of this means the BJP-JDU combine faces a tough task in retaining the state. A win will result in another five, possibly listless, years for Nitish Kumar. A loss will only hasten the decline for the JDU, but not the BJP, which will happily cede the space vacated by Nitish.

Also read: Bihar Elections: Why the BJP will win even if NDA loses

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(Edited by : Nazim)