Bihar Poll Theme: Fifteen Vs Fifteen

As Nitish replays old vinyl titled ‘RJD jungle raj’, Lalu’s son says— CM doesn’t have anything to show other than the Yadav family

- Giridhar Jha

The clouds of uncertainty hovering over the upcoming Bihar assembly elections have not dispersed yet, with the Election Commission still mulling ways to hold it on time in the midst of a global pande­ mic, but rival parties have already girded up their loins for a bitter battle ahead.

Even though there is no official word as yet on whether the voters in Bihar— the first state to go to polls in the post-coronavirus scenario—will be able to elect a new government as per schedule in October-November this year, there appears to be no ambiguity about what would be the main poll plank this time around: it will be 15 years of Nitish Kumar versus 15 years of Lalu Prasad Yadav.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will complete 15 years in power in November and aim for his fourth consecutive victory in the polls since the NDA ended the 15-year reign of the RJD government under his leadership in 2005. From 1990 to 2005, Lalu and his wife, Rabri Devi, had shared the chief ministership, before Nitish scripted three poll victories in a row in the next decade-and-a-half. For a few months, of course, Nitish had handed over the chief minister’s chair to his one-time protégé Jitan Ram Manjhi after the crushing defeat of JD(U) in 2014 Lok Sabha polls and also shared power for some time with the RJD after the 2015 assembly elections. But now, the battle lines appear to have been clearly drawn between the archrivals who look all set to make claims and counterclaims over their respective 15-year tenures to vie for the voters’ attention in the run-up to the polls.