MANDIR NARRATIVE OUTSHINES MANDAL CALCULUS IN BIHAR

For the first time, the BJP has emerged as the largest party in Bihar. It did so by playing second fiddle to erstwhile socialists with pragmatism and keeping other allies close

- RADHIKA RAMASESHAN

THE BJP has now firmly cemented its hold over the Hindi heartland with today's sweeping mandate from Bihar, a verdict that marks the party's first-ever emergence as the single largest force in the state assembly.

For years, Bihar had remained the lone exception in the party's otherwise uninterrupted arc of dominance stretching from Rajasthan in the west to Bihar in the east-covering Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and the Delhi NCR. That political map, almost entirely saffron, had one persistent gap. Bihar alone had resisted complete absorption. The BJP has ruled or is ruling every other state in this belt on its own; only Bihar kept it confined to the role of an indispensable, yet subordinate, partner.

For decades, the BJP functioned as a junior ally to one socialist formation or another. First came the Samata Party (SAP), the force that George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar built as an alternative to Lalu Prasad's dominance, which later transformed into the Janata Dal (United). Today's verdict breaks that long and unusually consistent pattern. The NDA's decisive win is not merely a tally but a structural shift: the BJP has overtaken the JD(U), seizing the pole position in a partnership that had historically tilted the other way. The margin-less than 10 seats-may look numerically modest, but politically, the symbolism dwarfs the mathematics.