The 2025 assembly elections in Bihar were no ordinary electoral battle for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); The state was, in many ways, a battlefield. The party had to work hard between balancing its interests – its graph is rising in the state – and that of being part of the alliance led by long-time partner Janata Dal (United). It also had to deal with anti-incumbency and a clearly active opposition.
There is reason to be pleased with its results.
The NDA won 202 seats, while the BJP itself won 89 seats, making it the largest party in a state that has never had a chief minister.
Party leaders attribute the NDA’s landslide victory to smart coalition politics, choice of right campaign issues and its ability to take advantage of the popularity of Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
united alliance
The first step, the leaders quoted above said, was to bring together a coalition of castes. The coming together of a group of parties with their own dedicated caste-based votebanks ensured that the NDA could spread its net widely.
According to senior party officials who played a key role in the talks between the allies and conducted the election campaign, preparations for the Bihar elections had begun last year along with the Lok Sabha elections, but after JDU’s support made it possible for the BJP, which did not have a majority on its own, to stake claim to form the government at the Centre, for the third time, the terms of engagement were reconsidered.
BJP, which habitually plays the role of elder brother and key player of NDA, had to choose a less effective role in Bihar. A senior party functionary said, “BJP has always followed the coalition dharma, even when we had enough numbers and did not need allies. This time there were more allies so it was natural to face some challenges, but in the end it was a coalition election and we showed the result.”
Apart from the upper caste votebank of the BJP, the NDA also had the JD(U), which counts a section of the Extremely Backward Class (EBC) and Kurmi and Kushwaha (Koeri) communities, besides women, as its main support base; Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) whose primary vote bank is the Paswan community, a major Scheduled Caste group; Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) which relies on the Mushahar community, an extremely poor and marginalized SC group; and Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) which is supported by the OBC Koeri community.
Nawada Lok Sabha MP Vivek Thakur said, “It was the most united campaign. There were no differences in the campaign, no disagreements. (BJP) workers across the country worked in the constituencies where their allies were contesting… There was no difference in the campaign of the allies, be it JDU or LJP.”
There were initial reports that HAM’s Jitan Ram Manjhi and RLM’s Khushwaha were unhappy at being given only six seats to contest, but these differences were kept from escalating. “Seat sharing is always difficult, as all parties feel that they should have more seats. In this case, the BJP led by example and did not push for more seats, even though our numbers and strike rate were better than JDU in 2020… and once the senior leadership sat down to sort out the issues the campaign started without any glitches,” said the first functionary quoted above. All parties also prohibited the rebels from contesting the elections as independents to prevent vote splitting.
While both BJP and JDU contested on 101 seats, LJP contested on 28 seats. This was also the first time that JDU and LJP contested elections together as part of the NDA in the state.
Former Union minister and senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “This is a victory of hope, faith and distribution. This is an iconic moment in Indian politics that people can rise above caste and rise to the occasion, that is the biggest lesson.”
Prasad said that while he attributed the victory to the long-term work of PM Modi and CM Kumar to empower women, people also rejected the opposition’s “dirty campaign”. “The foul language he used for the CM and PM was not liked and people reacted,” he said.
The wind is theirs, the storm is ours
Once the contours of the alliance were finalized, the parties launched a campaign with two main issues: the development and welfare schemes of the twin-engine government; And the opposition’s misgovernance or jungle raj, when it was in power between 1990 and 2005, was experienced by 90% of the state’s current voters. From Prime Minister Narendra Modi to booth workers, everyone warned about the return of Jungle Raj and compared it to improvements in law and order under Nitish Kumar.
“Jungle Raj was a reality in Bihar during Lalu Prasad Yadav’s rule. And people have not forgotten it. In fact, the vote bank supporting the RJD had already started showing strength thinking that Tejashwi (Yadav) would come to power and people from other castes did not want that…” Thakur said.
To buttress their claims, party leaders point out how killings and booth capturing were a common practice during Jungle Raj. There were 63 deaths during the 1985 elections and 87 deaths in 1990. In 1995, the Election Commission moved to postpone the elections four times due to unprecedented violence and electoral malpractice.
The campaign itself had two layers and two time frames. It began nearly five months ago, well before the elections were announced, and saw meetings addressed by leaders of various alliance partners in every major assembly constituency. Once the elections were announced, campaigners, PM Modi, Union ministers, Chief Ministers of other BJP ruled states and senior leaders came into the fray.
Laborthis or beneficiaries of government schemes are now counted as the BJP vote bank. In Bihar too, the party made every effort to woo workers with budgetary allocations Rs 60,000 crore (Union Budget) and cash transfer Rs 10,000 under the Chief Minister Mahila Rozgar Yojana.
“The cash transfer was a game changer… Women from the Muslim and Yadav communities (the base of the RJD) went against their families and voted for the NDA. There are at least 30 MY-dominated seats where the NDA has performed exceptionally well. This shows the impact of our social schemes, which transcend caste and religion, ultimately proving that their wind was there, our Aandhi (the wind was on their side, but there was a storm on our side),” said a second party functionary.
The BJP also ensured that there was no “negative campaign”, with no leader making inflammatory or polarizing remarks. Another leader said, “This was a lesson learned from 2015…”
In 2015, the BJP ran a polarization campaign pitting Muslims against Hindus.
Modi and Nitish and victory of knowledge
Despite concerns over his age and deteriorating health, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar remained the face of the elections. He was also ranked as the “only” socialist leader who spoke on development together with PM Modi.
“Our cadre on the ground focused on how the PM and CM are a formidable force with a track record of working together and a development-driven agenda. This election proves that knowledge (poor, youth, annadata, nari- poor, youth, farmers and women) has trumped caste. The concept of knowledge coined by the PM has heralded the biggest change in Bihar politics, which is riddled with caste barriers,” said another. Officer.
BJP leaders said the opposition’s over-dependence on the MY alliance led to the collapse of the alliance, while the sharp increase in seats of JDU, BJP and LJP is being seen as an expression of people’s faith in the coalition government’s plans for women, youth and deprived sections.
“The NDA has managed to get a huge vote share in 160 seats dominated by BC (backward class) and EBC (extremely backward class) demography. This simply means that all sections have voted in favor of the NDA,” said another official.
A senior RSS branch functionary said both the party and its ideological patron, the RSS, worked to shift voters’ priority from caste to development.
“Efforts to unite the castes have been made since the days of the Jan Sangh. It was even more important to do so in Bihar, which is considered the land of the socialist movement, but due to political reasons it remained tied to the Mandal-Kamandal shackles,” said this person.
The Sangh was worried about grouping some prominent castes like Yadavs with Muslims against the BJP, this person said.
