In Bihar, the NDA was back in power on Wednesday with a slender majority as it managed to win 125 seats in the 243-member state assembly. The Opposition Grand Alliance clinched 110, but RJD emerged as the single-largest party with 75 seats.
NDA’s win has paved the way for Nitish Kumar to return as chief minister. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing BJP workers on Wednesday, said that the results of the Bihar polls have proved “development will be the only basis for politics in the 21st century”.
Development work, trust, and aspirations and pride of Bihar have won in the state, he said.
Bihar was the first state in India to hold assembly elections since the Covid-19 outbreak. Foreign media also covered the election and looked at what the NDA win means during a pandemic.
The New York Times
It noted that the Bihar election result was a “stunning upset” in an election in which exit polls favoured the opposition parties, and in which Modi “personally campaigned to try to reverse disappointments for his party in recent months”.
“Despite a long stretch of plummeting economic indicators and a sharply rising coronavirus caseload that has put India only behind the United States in total cases, political analysts saw the result as proof that Modi has retained his popularity and can still rely on his Hindu-nationalist base.”
CNN
CNN quoted Gilles Verniers, a professor of political science at Ashoka University, as saying that it was unclear how much of a role coronavirus had played in how people voted.
He said Bihar already suffered from high rates of joblessness before Covid-19, but the lockdown and handling of migrant workers had made that worse. The report noted that “anger and resentment over how the migrant crisis was handled likely cost the BJP some votes”.
“It seems clear that Covid exacerbated every pre-existing problem ... but not to a point where it would topple the government,” Verniers said.
The Wall Street Journal
WSJ said that Bihar election results show “how Narendra Modi is buffered from Covid-19 fallout”.
“The popularity of the Bharatiya Janata Party looked like it may have been inoculated from the pandemic, as the ruling party candidates gained ground in Bihar’s state assembly election.”
WSJ went on to say that the vote was being watched as a referendum on Modi’s performance, while noting 8.59 million confirmed coronavirus cases in India and the economic contraction of close to 24% in the quarter through June.
Voters said they aren’t holding that against the prime minister, it added. “Like people in most states in India, voters in Bihar make their choices based on local issues, parties and leaders.”
Time
Time quoted analysts as saying that the “result shows the BJP’s Hindu nationalist message is now strong enough to overcome even local concerns over caste and political patronage.”
It noted that the campaign was defined by both the virus and the economic fallout. “Rather than blaming Modi for the chaos of the lockdown and ensuing economic crisis, it appears many voters instead blamed (Nitish) Kumar.”
Time quoted Neelanjan Sircar, a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, as saying that “in all of our polling data, Modi and the BJP are not taking a hit because of the lockdown”. He added that people are angry about the lockdown and jobs, but they’re angry with Nitish Kumar and not with Modi.
