Chirag Paswan, Jitan Ram Manjhi, Upendra Kushwaha and Mukesh Sahani are unlikely to top an expert list of politicians with maximum electoral impact in Bihar. But as the countdown to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls begins, they have come to bear outsize influence on the evolving battlefield of the state which sends 40 MPs to Lok Sabha.
While Paswan represents a section of voters who have been traditionally loyal to his father and Lok Janshakti Party founder Ram Vilas Paswan despite a split in the party, the other three leaders have unproven track record. But it has not stopped them from flexing their muscles as they count on their small base to make a big difference in the battle between the two main alliances.
Bihar is being seen as a state where the BJP faces a strong challenge after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) snapped ties with the party and joined hands with the opposition.
Wary of the formidable social alliance of the RJD-JD(U)-Left-Congress coalition which included some numerically strong backward castes besides Muslims, the BJP is determined to dent its rivals and expand its own base by joining hands with these smaller parties whose incremental votes may prove crucial.
And it is showing.
Only recently, former Union minister Kushwaha had said that he would rather die than join hands with the BJP. He now sees no challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2024 and was greeted by Bihar BJP president Sanjay Jaiswal after he left the JD(U).
Manjhi, a former chief minister who enjoys support among a section of Dalits in some parts of the state, remains an ally of Kumar but has been giving conflicting signals.
He claims his son Sanotsh Kumar Suman, a minister in the state government, will prove to be a better chief minister than other contenders after Kumar had suggested that Rashtriya Janata Dal leader and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav will lead their alliance in 2025 when the next assembly polls are due.
The crafty politician he is, Manjhi also insists that he will go by whatever decision Kumar takes. Incidentally, he was a BJP ally in the 2015 assembly polls.
In the simmering pot of Bihar politics, Sahani best represents the entrepreneurial streak of small parties as the businessman-turned-politician heading the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) had been a vocal BJP critic since all three MLAs of his party joined it and often spoke favourably of Kumar.
However, after the central government recently provided him "Y Plus" security, the speculation has begun that the BJP may be trying to win back his loyalty.
Kushwaha, who comes from the numerically strong Koeri-Kushwaha backward caste, Manjhi and Sahani, who seeks to emerge as a leader of numerous backward sub-castes traditionally involved in boating and fishing, have frequently changed sides in the past.
Chirag Paswan, who claims the rich legacy of his father Ram Vilas Paswan, has been vocally pro-BJP since 2014 but the young and ambitious leader is also keeping his cards close to his chest as far as his stand on the next Lok Sabha polls is concerned.
While he has been a trenchant critic of Kumar, he has not really gone after the RJD and its leader Tejashwi Yadav with a similar vigour.
In the political chessboard of moves and countermoves, these parties are also hedging their bets.
Kushwaha's close aide Fazal Imam Mallick makes his fledgling party's opposition to the state's ruling grand alliance clear but says it will be too early to speak about its stand on the 2024 polls as the situation continues to evolve.
Bihar BJP president Jaiswal's meeting with Kushwaha was out of courtesy after he floated a new party and not much should be read into it, he told PTI.
A VIP leader, who did not wish to be quoted, also spoke on the similar lines while acknowledging the BJP's overtures to the party.
"Let's first see how many seats are offered to us. To speak now on the alliance we will opt for in 2024 is like jumping into fire first and searching for water later," he said, highlighting the shifting and transactional nature of ties which often underpin political alliances.
There is a view in a section of the grand alliance leadership that their coalition is already too crowded to make space for other parties.
However, CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya says any split in the ranks of non-BJP parties will not be good as his party, which had put up an impressive show in the 2020 assembly polls, wants one big alliance against the BJP in 2024 in Bihar as well as across the country.
"At this point we can afford only one effective, broad-based alliance against the BJP," he said, adding that it will be unfortunate if any non-BJP party works to the saffron party's advantage.
The fundamental question of our democracy being "increasingly in peril" under the BJP rule had resulted in the experiment of all non-BJP parties coming together in Bihar, and this question remains intact, he said, pitching for unity among them.
How much votes they can bring in the Lok Sabha polls, where larger narratives often take precedence over local factors, is an open question but the political compulsion of bigger parties to consolidate every available vote in their favour have added to their pull.
Chirag Paswan, a Lok Sabha MP, had fetched over 5.5 per cent votes, a sizeable share with the potential to tip the scale, when his party had contested more than half of the assembly seats in the 2020 polls.
His party has, however, split since then, with his uncle and Union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras, also an MP, getting support of all other four parliamentarians of the party.
Kushwaha had fought the 2020 polls in alliance with Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM and had fetched around 1.75 per cent votes while Sahani's VIP got 1.5 per cent and Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha less than one per cent.
The symbolism of these leaders representing the traditionally deprived sections of society adds to their appeal.
The BJP and its then allies JD(U) and Ram Vilas Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party had won 39 of the 40 seats in Bihar in 2019.
When Kumar was not part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in 2014, the BJP had won 22 seats. Kushwaha-led RLSP as its ally had won three while the LJP bagged seven.
Kumar's JD(U) had then fought on its own to score win in only two seats. The 2024 polls will be the first Lok Sabha elections since 1994, when he had broken off his ties with then chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, which will see him and the RJD president, whose health has been indifferent for many years, coming together.
As political temperatures soar in the state, small parties hope to make hay.
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