With just two MPs in the Lok Sabha and a mauling in the five Assembly by-polls, too, the survival of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar looks very uncertain. Bihar has turned saffron in a big way with the Bharatiya Janata Party-Lok Janshakti Party-Rashtriya Lok Samata Party winning 31 of the 40 seats in the Lok Sabha election results declared on May 16.
But for Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United, the disastrous results almost spell doom as even the party's national president Sharad Yadav lost by 56,209 votes in Madhepura, a seat which he has represented five times in the Lok Sabha, to Rashtriya Janata Dal's Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav. To make matters worse for the JDU, its candidates came second in only three other seats Munger, Paschim Champaran and Supaul apart from Madhepura.
Senior Bihar BJP leader and former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi demanded Nitish Kumar's resignation claiming the state government had lost the mandate to rule. Clearly shocked by the scale of the rout, Nitish Kumar released a one line statement on his official facebook page: "I respect the mandate of the People. Jai Bihar! Jai Bharat!"
None of the JDU leaders were willing to speak about the results. When IBNLive contacted some of them, they simply said that the party would review the results and come up with its response. When asked about BJP seeking Nitish Kumar's resignation, a senior JDU leader rubbished the demand saying it was a Lok Sabha election.
JDU MLA from Barh Gyanendra Singh Gyanu has already blamed the party leadership for breaking alliance with BJP and for the party's decimation in the Lok Sabha elections.
The two wins for JDU came in Nitish Kumar's pocket borough of Nalanda and Purnia. While Purnia was won by Santosh Kumar by a big margin of 1,16,669 votes against BJP's Uday Singh, who had won in 2009, in Nalanda it was a very tough contest with sitting MP Kaushalendra Kumar managing to ward off LJP candidate Satya Nand Sharma's challenge by a narrow margin of 9,627 votes.
The fight in Bihar was between the BJP-LJP-RLSP combine and RJD-Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance. Such was the surge in the former's favor that one-time Nitish aide and now his bitter critic Upendra Kushwaha, who left the JDU to form the RLSP, won from Karakat bagging 3,38,892 votes against RJD's Kanti Singh who got 2,33,651 votes. JDU's Mahabali Singh was pushed to a distant third with only 76,709 votes.
In Munger sitting JDU MP Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lallan Singh was decimated by LJP candidate Veena wife, the wife of criminal-politician Suraj Bhan Singh, by a huge margin of 1,09,084 votes while in Supaul Pappu Yadav's wife Ranjeet Ranjan contesting on a Congress ticket triumphed over DILESHWAR KAMAIT of the JDU by 59,672 votes.
In 31 Lok Sabha seats the JDU and its ally the Communist Party was pushed to the third spot while in Arrah, Buxar and Siwan the party had to face the humiliation of coming fourth.
The seats where JDU came third are Araria, Darbhanga, Aurangabad, Bhagalpur, Gaya (SC), Gopalganj (SC), Hajipur (SC), Jahanabad, Jamui (SC), Jhanjharpur, Katihar, Khagaria, Kishangaj (Akhtarul Iman 55822), Madhubani, Maharajganj, Muzaffarpur, Nawada, Pataliputra, Patna Sahib, Purvi Champaran, Samastipur (SC), Saran, Sasaram (SC), Sheohar, Sitamarhi, Ujiarpur, Vaishali and Valmiki Nagar. In Kishanganj despite the JDU candidate Akhtarul Iman running away from the field, the party managed to garner 55,822. The CPI came third in Banka and Begusarai, the two seats where it contested.
If the Lok Sabha results were a disaster, there was more bad news for the JDU in the Assembly by-polls where it managed to win just one out of the five seats.
JDU's Mujahid Alam managed to wrest Kochadhaman from the RJD by defeating Congress candidate Sadique Samdani. But the other fours seats Baisi, Chiraia, Maharajganj and Sahebpur Kamal went to its rivals.
It was RJD which won Baisi, Chiraia and Sahebpur Kamal, the BJP emerged victorious in Maharajganj. In Baisi Abdus Subhan of the RJD defeated JDU's Sayed Ruknuddin. Chiraia and Sahebpur Kamal were won by RJD's Laxmi Narayan Prasad Yadav and Shrinarayan Yadav who defeated BJP's Lal Babu Prasad Gupta and Shashi Kant Kumar respectively. BJP's Kumar Deo Ranjan Singh was the winner from Maharajganj pushing RJD candidate Manik Chand Ray to the second spot.
Nitish, who is heading a minority government in the state following the snapping of ties with the BJP over Modi's anointment as PM candidate, has been saying throughout his campaign that if the JD(U) were to perform poorly in the elections, the BJP would destabilise his government.
Through out his election campaign he had appealed to the voters to rewarde him for the development work carried out by his government but the results show that this failed to cut any ice with the electorate either in the Lok Sabha elections or the Assembly by-polls.
Currently, the JDU has 116 MLAs in the 243-member Assembly, besides having the support of four Congress MLAs, one CPI legislator and four independents. Further, the Congress-RJD alliance means that the JDU can no longer count on the grand old party's backing. Compounding Nitish's woes, the Patna High Court recently set aside the election of Som Prakash Singh, one of the four independent MLAs supporting the JDU government.
The politically beleaguered Chief Minister was also forced to crackdown on dissidence and the JDU had initiated action against four of its MLAs. With a resurgent and aggressive BJP breathing down his neck and losing all the clout in the Lok Sabha, Nitish, who earlier used to call the shots in the JDU, would now find it increasingly hard to convince the party workers that his decision to sever ties with the BJP was taken in the party's best interests.
But with BJP leaders claiming that 52 JDU MLAs are in touch with them, the alarm bells are ringing for Nitish Kumar. Several BJP leaders have claimed that on May 21 when Narendra Modi takes oath as the Prime Minister of India, the JDU government may become history in Bihar.
The only silver lining for the JDU lies in the vote share. While the party has been firmly pushed to the third spot when Lok Sabha vote share is taken into account, in the Assembly by-poll it is a closer fight between the RJD, BJP and JDU.####
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