Tunnel vision: On the Bihar election result and the Congress’s stance

The disastrous show of the Mahagatbandhan, led by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), successful the Bihar Assembly elections, has been followed by claims attributing this to a purported collusion betwixt the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission of India (ECI). The RJD won 25 seats, the Congress six, the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation) two, and the CPI (Marxist) conscionable one. Allegations of ballot theft revolve astir pre-existing concerns astir the ECI’s perceived bias towards the BJP, and astir the much contestable assertion of manipulating electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). The workout raised concerns that it was moving the work of proving one’s eligibility to ballot to the radical alternatively of strengthening the authorities and the ECI to proceed upholding it. Concerns of this quality are relevant, including for the ongoing 2nd signifier of SIR. But prevailing explanations of the National Democratic Alliance’s win are besides not incredible, converging connected high women’s turnout, focused payment and currency transfers, a recalibrated coalition of OBC and EBC groups, and organisational capacity. In fact, the ECI’s determination to not restrain the Nitish Kumar authorities from transferring currency to beneficiaries of a State women’s scheme, by accepting it arsenic “ongoing”, contradicts a barroom the ECI acceptable during the 2023 Rajasthan Assembly polls for Ashok Gehlot’s Congress government. Thus, the allegations against the ECI are partially owed to its concerning conduct.

However, determination is nary verifiable grounds that the signifier of deletions by SIR crossed booths aligns with the voting preferences of 1 coalition’s supporters. There is besides nary method to lucifer each deleted introduction with a credible, pre-existing grounds of partisan preference. In the constituencies that the Mahagatbandhan covered successful its ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’, which framed deletions arsenic portion of a concerted effort to dispossess circumstantial groups of their franchise, it performed arsenic poorly arsenic successful the remainder of Bihar. This nonaccomplishment whitethorn beryllium due to the fact that the Mahagatbandhan neither consolidated nationalist sentiment pursuing the Yatra nor linked livelihood issues with the SIR’s inclusivity. It besides lacked credible answers to the NDA run that electing Tejashwi Yadav arsenic Chief Minister would pb to ‘jungle raj’, a notation to the RJD’s erstwhile terms. The predetermination was besides fought connected the question of who should beryllium Chief Minister — Mr. Kumar oregon Mr. Yadav — and the polarisation connected this question evidently favoured the former. Opposition parties, peculiarly the Congress, should measure their failures successful Bihar successful a mode that does not undermine an already fragile nationalist assurance successful the ECI. Blaming the ECI to debar introspection tin beryllium self-defeating for the Congress, to the grade that much of that is possible.