Days after rebuking party, Advani lauds government

Days after the scathing attack on the BJP leadership following the party’s debacle in the Bihar Assembly election, BJP veteran L.K. Advani on Sunday heaped praise on the NDA government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while casting his vote in the Ahmedabad municipal polls.

Mr. Advani expressed the hope that the BJP would be voted back in the local elections in Gujarat, saying: “I am hopeful that the results of the local polls will be the repeat of the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls.”

“I can say that the consciousness of our party has increased [after the Bihar poll]. All efforts have been made here to see that the result comes in our favor. And these efforts will be certainly reflected in the result,” he said after exercising his franchise at Khanpur in Ahmedabad, where Mr. Advani and his family are registered voters.

“I believe the whole system takes its own time. Since the government is going in the right direction, I believe that the results will also be good,” he said, asked about the performance of the NDA government.

On Sunday, Mr. Advani appeared appreciative of the BJP leadership of Mr. Modi and Amit Shah.

After the Bihar election, Mr. Advani and former Union Ministers Yashwant Sinha, M.M. Joshi, Shanta Kumar and Arun Shourie issued a strongly worded statement attacking the leadership for the fiasco and demanding that responsibility be fixed for the debacle. They said the party had been “emasculated” in the last one year and was being “forced to kow-tow to a handful.”

Mr. Advani, an MP from Gandhinagar, said the local bodies polls were as important as the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. In the municipal polls this time, 50 per cent of the seats have been reserved for women. Four candidates from one party per ward are in the fray. “I am happy that MPs are also allowed to vote in the corporation polls. I also learnt that 50 per cent seats are reserved for women,” Mr. Advani said.

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Bihar doomed if Lalu, Nitish win, says Modi

Bihar voted in the fourth phase of the Assembly polls on Sunday, registering a turnout of 57.6 per cent, one of the highest in these elections so far, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi kept up an unflagging attack on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD leader Lalu Prasad.

In his speech at a public meeting in Madhepura, that will go to the polls in the final phase on November 5, Mr. Modi declared that Mahagathbandhan or Grand Alliance of Mr. Lalu Yadav and Mr. Nitish Kumar coming to power in Bihar would spell doom for the State and its people.

He said the State needed two engines for development and lifting it out of the backwardness. “One in Patna and the other in Delhi,” he said, making the point that the government led by the same party at the Center and in the State could help in faster development. “Jungle raj now has got a new twin brother,jantar-mantar [sorcery],” he said, referring to a leaked video of Mr. Nitish Kumar’s visit to a tantrik last year. “Don’t let them come together as it spells only doom and destruction of Bihar and its people.”

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Polling begins for first phase of Bihar elections

As Bihar heads for what is being billed as a mini-Lok Sabha election, with 49 constituencies going to the polls on Monday, the battle-lines are drawn. As the BJP-led NDA and the Nitish-Lalu-led grand alliance face off each other, casting other smaller alliances to the margins, the BJP no longer appears to have the edge it had a fortnight ago, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared to be more popular across castes and regions. 

No. of seats being contested by different political parties in the first phase:

Party	No. of seats
BSP	41
BJP	27
RJD	17
LJP	13
Congress	8
RLSP	6
CPI	25
CPI(M)	12

Live updates:

9:50 am: Over 10% polling till now.

9:25 am: Polling temporarily halted at Ramchandrapur booth number 86 in Sarairanjan constituency due to EVM malfunction.

8:48 am: 6% voting during first hour of polling.

7:52 am: 1,35,72,339 electorate will cast their votes in the 49 seats for which 583 candidates, including 54 women, are in the fray.

7:46 am: Given a bipolar contest and accretion of different social groups under the banner of either alliance, relative turnouts of various communities could clinch the verdict. If MBCs, Dalits and Forward Castes turn out in more numbers than the Muslim-Yadav-Kurmi coalition on polling days, then the NDA may carry the day.

7:43 am: Union Minister Giriraj Singh casts his vote in Barahiya.

7:36 am: How women voters can tip the scales in Bihar

Women in Bihar have been agents of change in previous elections and have brought in significant political and policy changes in the State. Bihar is the fourth largest State in India in terms of the total number of electors (55 million). It contains 8 per cent of the total number of electors in the country.

7:28 am: Polls are being held in 49 seats, some in Naxal-infested districts of Jamui, Banka, Lakhisarai, Nawada and Munger.

7:26 am: Mr. Modi tweets: "Urging all those voting today in Bihar to vote in large numbers. I particularly urge my young friends to cast their vote."

7:19 am: The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has an added responsibility — to guard the politicians of Bihar, one of the worst hit by Naxal violence. Of the 15 politicians accorded VIP security cover, 13 are from the BJP or members of its alliance.

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Lalu ‘out of sync’ with new Bihar

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“Lalu Prasad had given backward castes a voice and self-respect, but his own caste’s dominance gave him a bad name,” said an ageing Manoranjan Chaurasia, taking a break from a game of cards in a field in his village in Khagaria district.

Youngsters of his caste aren’t this charitable and display impatience with Mr. Prasad’s politics. “We need industry. I have stayed in Gujarat and Maharashtra. People look down upon Bihar as we don’t have industry here,” Prabhash Chaurasia said, disagreeing with the elder village resident. He said he supported the BJP.

The political graph of Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Lalu Prasad is falling as aspirations change, caste politics becomes nuanced and people charge the RJD with corruption and poor governance.

Mr. Prasad said days back that the present contest was between forward and backward castes. BJP ally and Mahadalit leader of the Musahar caste Jitan Ram Manjhi promptly disagreed.

The statement reflected Bihar politics of the 1990s, which seems to have changed now.

His conviction on corruption charges and image of poor governance apart, Mr. Prasad’s decline also stems from a gradual change in backward caste politics in Bihar. The first change was non-Yadavs seeking an autonomous space within OBC politics, which was symbolised by Mr. Kumar allying with the BJP — then seen as an upper caste party — to take on Mr. Prasad in 1994. The alliance defeated the RJD in 2005, and the BJP accepted Mr. Kumar as NDA’s leader in Bihar.

The scenario has changed further now. OBCs are no longer a bloc, and backward caste politics displays fragmentation even as individual backward castes seek welfare schemes and affirmative action. They are open to aligning with the BJP though many of them have fond memories of Mr. Kumar’s rule.

“Narendra Modi and Sushil Modi being from backward castes, OBCs and EBCs are increasingly open to allying with the BJP,” JNU academic Badri Narayan, an expert on caste, told The Hindu. He pointed to internal differentiation between backward castes. Sajjan Kumar Singh, a JNU doctoral student of politics who has surveyed Bihar for a month, said, “Each backward caste is looking at its own interest. There isn’t a bloc any longer; there are many individual castes.”

This affords the BJP a good opportunity to reach out to small, individual castes. This reporter’s visits to villages of OBCs and EBCs revealed interesting trends.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had sought to carve out a coherent EBC block as Chief Minister. But these castes aren’t acting as a group. Many have fond memories of Mr. Kumar’s rule but do not share the same sentiment for the RJD.

With an overarching backward caste politics no longer the glue, many backward castes in Yadav regions are uneasy with Yadav dominance, observers say. A Congress leader said he feared this would give the BJP a hidden advantage, as Yadavs outnumbered the BJP-supporting dominant castes, the Bhumihars and Rajputs.

The same may be true for Scheduled Castes in regions where Yadavs have a strong presence. Musahars of Barkhaban village in Gaya are with the NDA. They work in fields owned by Yadavs and the smirk on their faces is unmistakable when they say the landowners vote for Mr. Prasad.

The grand alliance still commands a Muslim-Yadav-Kurmi vote bank.

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Modi’s intense poll tours a contrast to long absences after

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday addressed his first rally in Bihar after the announcement of the Assembly poll dates in the State.

He will be the main campaigner for his party in the Bihar elections and is expected to address more than 20 rallies over a month (the last date of campaigning is November 3 in this five-phase polls), a situation which could see him visit the State every other day of the month. How does that compare with his campaigning track record?

Data put together by The Hindu reveal that the Prime Minister tends to campaign in very intense bouts, packing in multiple venues and events in a single day. His public engagements in a particular State also dip after the polls are over.

The data, compiled from the Prime Minister’s website and Mr. Modi’s personal website, show that of the five States that have had elections since he assumed office, Mr. Modi has campaigned in all.

He held the most rallies and campaign events in Maharashtra — 24 (one rally in Nashik was cancelled due to rain) — which went to the polls on October 15 last year, while he spent the most days on the road campaigning, six days for nine rallies, in Jharkhand, which had its elections between November 25 and December 20 last year. The case of Maharashtra is astonishing since Mr. Modi seems to have packed in 24 rallies in just 10 days (October 4-13). In fact, between October 12 and 13, in the final burst of campaigning in the State, he addressed as many as eight rallies.

Mr. Modi held only five rallies over as many days in Delhi, which had its election on February 7 this year. The BJP lost the election to a wave in favor of the Aam Aadmi Party.

The data also show that official and party events sometimes run parallel to each other in poll-bound States. Between July and October 2014, the four months leading up to the Jammu and Kashmir elections, the Prime Minister visited the State four times for official functions, while he has had just one official function in the State since. Similarly, Mr. Modi’s first visit to Bihar since becoming the Prime Minister in May 2014 was on July 25, 2015, when he attended an official function in Patna, followed by a campaign rally in Muzaffarpur.

On Friday, Mr. Modi addressed a rally in Banka, his first in a series of 20 rallies he is expected to address in a month. The State will go to the polls in five phases from October 12.

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No upper caste CM if NDA wins in Bihar: BJP

The repercussions of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s interview to Organizer, in which he called for a review of reservation, are still unfolding in Bihar, with the BJP vowing to make a backward class leader the Chief Minister if the NDA wins the Assembly polls.

Minister of State for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and prominent Bhumihar leader Giriraj Singh said on Tuesday: “An upper caste [man] cannot become Chief Minister of Bihar; it is certain that if the BJP-led NDA comes to power, the next Chief Minister will be from either the OBCs or the EBCs.”

Both what was said and who said it is significant. Mr. Singh’s declaration is a fallout of a perceived backlash from these classes to Mr. Bhagwat’s interview, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Janata Dal (U) making political capital out of it.

On Monday, RJD chief Lalu Prasad referred to Mr. Bhagwat’s interview and said the polls were being fought between alliances representing the forward castes (NDA) and the backward castes (his grand alliance with the JD-U).

In choosing Mr. Singh, a prominent upper caste leader, to make this statement was to accord it an aura of consensus in a caste-sensitive State. The declaration, however, puts paid to the ambitions of at least half-a-dozen upper caste contenders for CM in the party.

Damage-control exercise: JD(U)

The BJP’s declaration that the NDA would make an OBC or EBC man the next Bihar Chief Minister if the NDA wins the Assembly polls there, was termed by the JD(U) on Tuesday as a damage-control exercise which was too little too late. “The truth about the BJP’s real inclinations is revealed by the way the party has distributed ticket, with 65 of the 160 seats given to the upper castes. Nobody is fooled,” JD(U) Bihar chief Bashishtha Narayan Singh told The Hindu.

The statement of Union Minister Giriraj Singh that an upper caste man cannot become Chief Minister proves that on the ground, caste equations still decide matters.

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