PM Modi had begun his campaign with a rally at Samastipur, where he also visited the ancestral house of Bharat Ratna Karpoori Thakur.
The high-octane campaign for the first phase of the Bihar assembly elections, spanning 121 constituencies, concluded on Tuesday evening after weeks of sharp exchanges, personal attacks, and polarising rhetoric. Electioneering picked up pace soon after the polls for the 243-member assembly were announced on October 6, with most parties finalising their seat-sharing and candidate lists. The campaign gained full momentum once the Diwali and Chhath festivities ended.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the blitzkrieg on behalf of the ruling NDA, with as many as eight rallies, two of which were held on the penultimate day of campaigning, besides a roadshow in Patna, and digital interactions with booth-level workers, and also with women, on the final day of electioneering.
PM Modi had begun his campaign with a rally at Samastipur, where he also visited the ancestral house of Bharat Ratna Karpoori Thakur. He shared the stage with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the JD(U) president, who vies with arch-rival Lalu Prasad, the RJD president, in claiming to be the true ideological heir to the EBC (extremely backwards classes) icon.
The 75-year-old PM pulled no punches in charging the RJD-Congress combine, the two largest constituents of the INDIA bloc, with “protecting infiltrators” and cautioned the people against “a return of jungle raj”.
His remark that the Congress agreed to name Prasad’s son Tejashwi Yadav as the INDIA bloc’s CM candidate, only when RJD put a “katta” (country-made gun) on its head, drew much flak from the RJD leader and former deputy chief minister, who alleged that the language was unbecoming of a prime minister.
Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, also held as many as seven rallies, the last three falling on the concluding day of the campaign.
The Congress leader repeatedly accused Modi of trying to enact a “drama” during the Chhath festival. He said Modi was reportedly to take a dip in the Yamuna, which was too polluted for a bath, and backtracked when it came to light that a puddle had been created at the spot with “clean, piped water”.
Modi sought to deflect the criticism by pointing out that Gandhi was “fond of visiting places abroad, but never getting the time to visit Ram temple at Ayodhya”, and his statements were tantamount to an “insult to Chhathi Maiya”.
CM Kumar, who is a few months shy of turning 75, put paid to speculations about his health with a tireless campaign across the length and breadth of the state though his absence at the PM’s rallies and roadshow over the last few days provided much cannon fodder to the opposition which has been claiming that the BJP was done with playing second fiddle to the JD(U) supremo and would try to elbow him out after elections.
The BJP, which is known for running a star-studded campaign, pulled out its famed heavy artillery. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who has held more than 20 rallies so far, sometimes staying put in the state for days, was assisted by cabinet colleagues like fellow former party president Rajnath Singh and the current chief Jagat Prakash Nadda.
Regional satraps like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his counterparts in BJP-ruled states like Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Delhi — Himanta Biswa Sarma, Mohan Yadav, Mohan Charan Manjhi and Rekha Gupta, respectively — were also called into action.
The prominent seats that will go to the polls in the first phase are Tejashwi Yadav’s Raghopur, Mahua, from where his brother Tej Pratap Yadav is trying his luck with a new political outfit, and Tarapur, from where Deputy CM Samrat Choudhary is fighting the elections.
The other seats in focus in this phase are Alinagar, from where singer Maithili Thakur is fighting the elections on a BJP ticket, Deputy CM Vijay Kumar Sinha’s Lakhisarai, Mokama — where the JD(U) candidate is strongman Anant Singh, who has been arrested in the murder case of his opponent Dular Chand Yadav, and Raghunathpur, where the RJD candidate is late gangster-turned-politician Md Shahabuddin’s son Osama Shahab.
Other Union ministers who campaigned in the poll-bound state included Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Piyush Goyal. Former Union ministers Smriti Irani and Anurag Thakur, recognised as crowd pullers, were also seen on the campaign trail.
Among the notable campaigners of the Congress were Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who canvassed in the state for the first time, and has held three rallies and a roadshow so far, and party president Mallikarjun Kharge.
The election campaign was also marred by a one-off, albeit high-profile, incident of violence.
Dular Chand Yadav, who had aligned with Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party, was allegedly killed in a skirmish with supporters of Anant Singh, the JD(U) candidate from Mokama.
The killing had triggered fears of a fresh round of gang-war in the volatile constituency, which is witnessing a straight battle between Singh and RJD’s Veena Devi, whose husband Suraj Bhan has been his old rival in politics and the underworld.
