Bihar Assembly polls: Shrinking space for third front

Bihar’s political duo Mahagatbandhan (grand alliance) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) – appear to be firmly entrenched, leaving behind them increasingly narrow space for any third or other political formation.

The visible shift in voters’ preferences can be seen from the 2015 results, where the grand alliance comprising the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), its traditional ally the Congress, and the Janata Dal (United) (JDU) dealt a hard blow to the NDA led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). At that time, the total vote share of the two main formations exceeded 75%.

The grand alliance’s vote share was 41.84%, with 178 out of the total 243 seats, while the NDA got approximately 34% of the votes, with 58 seats. This election was the only instance where JD(U) faced voters along with RJD and Congress. In all other cases, he was with the BJP as part of the NDA.

Before 2015, the collective power of the two formations was close to two-thirds of the votes cast. This rate was around 65% both in October-November 2005, when the NDA decisively ended the 15-year reign of Rashtriya Janata Dal founder Lalu Prasad, and in 2010, when the NDA won a whopping 206 seats. In the first Assembly elections (February 2005) after Jharkhand’s separation from Bihar in November 2000, the total vote share was about 53%.

The strength and attractiveness of the main formations were such that those who tried their luck independently could not sustain themselves and eventually joined one of the two coalitions. At the same time, it cannot be said that the formations do not benefit from the existence of smaller parties. A prominent example is the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, which contested elections alone or with smaller parties until 2015. Five years ago, it joined the grand alliance, winning 12 of the 19 seats it contested.

On different occasions in the last 20 years, two prominent Dalit leaders of the state – Ram Vilas Paswan, who founded the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), and his son Chirag Paswan, who heads the LJP (RV-Ram Vilas) – have tried to make it big independently of the two entities. In the February 2005 poll, LJP won 29 seats. Although there were widespread expectations that he would play the decision-making role, circumstances were such that in May 2005, the Assembly was dissolved by the then Speaker APJ Abdul Kalam, without even meeting once; this was the first such incident in the country. The continued presence of the Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) (HAM-S), which broke away from the JD(U), in the NDA is another example of the interdependence of the players involved.

The entry of the Jan Suraaj Party (JSP), founded by poll strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor, into the fray has triggered a debate about the possibility of the JSP ending the duopoly in the state, just as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) have done in Delhi and Andhra Pradesh respectively. However, it remains to be seen whether the JSP will relegate the grand alliance or the NDA to third place with Mr Kishor’s withdrawal from the election fray.