The seat-sharing among the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners for the Bihar election has sent out a clear message, the Janata Dal (United) is no longer the senior partner in Bihar and that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is now an equal.
Both parties are contesting on 101 seats each in the 243-member Assembly this time. In the previous elections, the JD(U) has always fought on greater number of seats, projecting the party as the bada bhai, or elder brother, in Bihar politics with the BJP as its chhota bhai, or younger sibling.
Ever since the 2010 Assembly poll, the JD(U) and Mr. Kumar have been at the helm of the NDA, barring 2015 when he was part of the Mahagathbandhan. Two years later, he broke away from the grand alliance and teamed up with the BJP to form the government again. But for the first time, Mr. Kumar, despite being widely believed to retain the position of the ‘elder brother’ in the alliance, will be an equal partner of the BJP, as far as the number of seats is concerned.
Also, there are speculations about the Chief Minister’s health, and it has become a talking point among voters.
“The JD(U) has been doing good work for the State in terms of development and maintaining law and order, but due to the failing health of the Chief Minister, we are not in favour of him continuing in the post. The BJP should come forward to take over the mantle this time,” said Prem Prakash, a migrant worker from Motihari town in East Champaran district.
Mr. Prakash, 34, works in a sportswear factory in Punjab’s Ludhiana. “I along with a group of my friends have come home early due to the festival rush. We will also cast our votes. While we do appreciate Nitish Kumar as the Chief Minister, but he should retire now. He is getting old and he should let others take over,” he said over the phone.
The other NDA ally, the Chirag Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), has got 29 seats, but political analysts in the State wondered if the JD(U) voters would back Mr. Paswan, who, in the 2020 Assembly polls, was instrumental in the defeat of several JD(U) candidates, restricting the party’s tally to 43 seats.
“The political bonhomie between Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Chirag Paswan is yet to reach the previous stage,” said Patna-based political analyst Nawal Kishore Choudhary.
Mr. Paswan had demanded at least 30 seats for the Assembly election as his party has five Lok Sabha MPs. In Bihar, one parliamentary constituency roughly has six Assembly segments.
“The JD(U) has been very lenient to Mr. Paswan. But will the voters back LJP (RV) candidates,” asked Ravi Shankar Singh Ashok who resigned from LJP (RV) on Monday to contest the poll as an Independent candidate from the Suryagarha Assembly seat in Lakhisarai district.
Mr. Prakash thinks Prashant Kishor, the new entrant in the State’s politics claiming to be the third alternative, makes sense when he talks. “But we will wait before casting our vote for him. He should prove his credentials first before getting our vote,” he said. “What if he flies away after the poll having made all tall claims,” he asked, casting a doubt about the credibility of Mr. Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party (JSP).
After the party’s second list of candidates was released in Patna on Monday, ticket-seekers who claimed to be associated with the JSP for long created ruckus alleging that “money was exchanged for tickets”. Mr. Kishor was seen escorted out of the venue.
For Mr. Prakash and his group of friends, the grand alliance, led by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), still “carries the haunting baggage of lawlessness of the previous regime”.
Mr. Choudhary said that “if the RJD experiments like Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh by giving fewer tickets to Yadav candidates, it could manage to get over this baggage of previous regime”. He said the Samajwadi Party’s strategy of PDA (pichre, Dalit, alpashankhak, or backward, Dalit, minority) could help the RJD shed its Muslim-Yadav tag and attract voters.
Published – October 13, 2025 08:07 pm IST