Results of Bihar Assembly elections and bypolls in 10 states will mirror the mood of the nation

Any common trend of the results will be read as an indicator of India's political attitude towards BJP

Results of Bihar Assembly elections and 54 Assembly constituencies across 10 states including 28 in Madhya Pradesh, eight in Gujarat, seven in Uttar Pradesh, two each in Jharkhand, Karnataka, Nagaland and Odisha and one each in Chhattisgarh, Haryana, and Telangana, will be considered as a reflection of the nation's political mood.

While the JDU-led NDA in Bihar, which has been in power in the state for 11 of the last 15 years, is predicted by exit polls to lose badly, what is also being watched closely is the results of Assembly bypolls including in states like Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, where the BJP has weaned away MLAs from the rival Congress through its tried and tested formulae of Operation Lotus, which originated first in Karanataka way back in 2008 to garner majority for the B S Yeddyurappa-led government.

Since BJP is in power either by itself or through an alliance in seven of the eleven poll-bound states, any common trend of the results will also be read as an indicator of the political mood of the nation towards the ruling party, though in Bihar, as the exit polls suggest, the anger is particularly directed against the ally JDU led by Nitish Kumar, with the BJP poised to perform much better than its ally and emerge at least as the second-largest party in the state.

BJP is part of Democratic Alliance of Nagaland while the saffron party on its own is ruling in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana. JMM-led Opposition alliance rules in Jharkhand, TRS is in power in Telangana, and Naveen Patnaik-led BJD is at the helm in Odisha. Congress is the ruling party in Chhattisgarh.

So far, it has been indicated that BJP will do well in Gujarat and will breathe easy in Madhya Pradesh, where a favourable results could stabilise the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, which came to power after ousting the one and half year government of Kamal Nath, following the rebellion of Jyotiraditya Scindia against Congress.

With Scindia crossing over to the BJP, Congress lost a government in one of the three states it had won in 2018, the other two being Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. Congress had won Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh after a gap of 15 years and hence the loss rankled more.

In UP, where most of the seven seats had fallen vacant after the death of legislators including two due to Covid-19, a result, either way, is inconsequential for Yogi Adityanath government, which has a huge majority but a loss could give the divided Opposition in the state an impetus to raise the chorus of the government becoming gradually unpopular because six of the seven seats were earlier held by the BJP.

But all eyes will be on the mother of all elections in Bihar, where an interesting aspect could be the revival of the Left, which is on a backburner in the adjoining West Bengal. Indications are that the CPI-ML has done reasonably well in its old area of influence Bhojpur, a region of intercenine caste war in past, while the CPI has also managed to put up a moderately good show. Their alliance with RJD seems to have cemented the votes of OBCs and Dalits and has also given sort of a caste neutral layer to the caste-based parties, adding a twist of class politics in the state.

RJD and Congress with three Left parties seem to have brought out a new social coalition and indications are that politics is going there in the 1990 mode, when it was a bi-polar scenario between RJD and BJP.

These elections are the first after the Covid-19 outbreak and the states going to polls like UP, Bihar, MP and Chhattisgarh have a big migration for employment. Large populations from these states working in metros had to return because of coronavirus lockdown and the results will also be a referendum on the handling of the migrant issue by the respective state governments.

These are also farm-based states, where the Central government's recent farm laws have been criticised by the opposition parties who seek to build an "anti-farmer" narrative against the BJP government.

How the political narrative is being built by the Opposition around these polls is evident from the editorial of Shiv Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana', which said without naming the NDA that "Balloons of lies were released in the air, but they disappeared in the air itself".