WHY INDIA IS TRANSFIXED BY ELECTIONS IN BIHAR

[In refusing to name a chief-ministerial candidate, the BJP has ensured that Mr Modi is testing his personal magic against the local champions of Bihar. If he wins, the BJP will score a crucial few seats in the upper house of the national parliament, which has proved adept in thwarting him. If he loses, he and his opponents nationwide will be recalibrating strategy in years to come.]

The Economist Explains

ON OCTOBER 12th, India's notoriously backward state of Bihar begins a near month-long election for its state assembly. With 66m people eligible to vote over five phases of polling, across some of the densest and roughest bits of north India, the election was never going to be easy. Despite being home to a population larger than that of any country in western Europe, Bihar remains stubbornly sub-national in its politics. Campaigns are rife with cults of personality and coalition-building on the basis of castes that hold little sway elsewhere. So why is everyone in India watching this state as if the future of the republic were at stake?

One reason for the wide interest is that this year’s vote has brought some of India’s most colourful political rivals into combat. The prime minister, Narendra Modi (pictured), has risked his own stature by leading his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) into battle against an odd alliance of erstwhile enemies: the technocratic chief minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, who used to ally with the BJP but broke over Mr Modi’s ascent; and the wildly charismatic and corrupt Lalu Prasad Yadav, his predecessor. The setting is equally dramatic. Bihar has long lagged on every social indicator and is often used within India as a byword for misgovernance and backwardness. But since 2005, with the start of Mr Kumar’s reign, Bihar has scored several years of double-digit growth, outpacing and inspiring the rest of the country.

What makes this race important in Delhi, the capital, is the way it has become a test of Mr Modi’s prestige against the most formidable opposition he is likely to face in his first term as prime minister. The BJP had never captured any sort of majority in Bihar until last year, when it swept aside both Mr Kumar’s party and Mr Yadav's loyal voters, winning most of the state’s parliamentary seats in a general election. In the previous state election, in 2010, the pre-Modi BJP won just 91 of 243 seats in the state assembly. Will the momentum hold? Sensing a powerful foe in Mr Modi, Messrs Kumar and Yadav, who detested one another openly in the past, formed a “grand alliance”. (The BJP’s national rival, Congress, has joined too, but the campaign led by its scion, Rahul Gandhi, has shown little flair.) In refusing to name a chief-ministerial candidate, the BJP has ensured that Mr Modi is testing his personal magic against the local champions of Bihar. If he wins, the BJP will score a crucial few seats in the upper house of the national parliament, which has proved adept in thwarting him. If he loses, he and his opponents nationwide will be recalibrating strategy in years to come.

The vote counting will not start counted until November 8 th. Analysts will be eager to interpret the verdict as either victory or defeat for Mr Modi’s national agenda of economic development. This will be complicated by the fact that many Biharis credit Mr Kumar for their state’s recent progress. But other things are at stake too: in the past few weeks an ugly spate of anti-Muslim violence elsewhere in north India, most strikingly the lynching of a man accused by his neighbours of eating beef (which is legal), has changed the equation. The BJP has been shamefully silent about the killing. Even when Mr Modi spoke of it on October 8th, he was elliptical and deflected blame from his Hindu-nationalist allies who expressed sympathy with the murderers. There is an electoral logic to this pandering. the BJP wants to divide the Muslims and Hindus within Mr Yadav's coalition. While both sides can mount arguments about development, neither is above playing the old cards of caste and community.

@ The Economist

AMID BOYCOTT, BIHAR SEES 57% VOTING IN FIRST PHASE

[The BJP, which is trying to cash in on Narendra Modi wave against Nitish-led alliance, had won 13 seats in 2010. This time the saffron brigade is contesting elections in alliance with the LJP, RLSP and the HAM.]

By Abhay Kumar

Amid poll boycott call given by the Maoists, the first phase of elections for Bihar’s 49 constituencies passed off peacefully.

According to Election Commission sources, 57 per cent of the electorate on Monday came out to cast their votes in different constituencies spread over 10 districts in the state.

Additional Chief Electoral Officer (ACEO) R Lakshmanan said turnout of woman voters was relatively more compared to previous poll. “In all, 59.5 per cent woman voters turned up while 54.5 per cent male electorate cast their votes,” the ACEO said.

“The senior-most voter who exercised her franchise on Monday was 108-year-old Maharani Devi at Teghra Assembly constituency in Begusarai,” said chief electoral officer Ajay Nayak here on Monday.

Bihar will witness a five-phase election following which poll results will be declared on November 8. The second phase of polling will take place on October 16. After that, there will a short break because of Durga Puja and Muharram. The third phase will commence on October 28, followed by November 1. The fifth and last day of voting will take place on November 5. Monday’s election sealed the fate of 583 candidates, many of whom are Independents. Stung by allegation of corruption against one of its ministers Awadhesh Kushwaha (now dropped from the Cabinet), the ruling JD (U)’s prestige is at stake as in 2010 Assembly elections, it had won 29 seats out of 49 constituencies where voting took place on Monday.

The BJP, which is trying to cash in on Narendra Modi wave against Nitish-led alliance, had won 13 seats in 2010. This time the saffron brigade is contesting elections in alliance with the LJP, RLSP and the HAM.

The Congress’s credibility too is at stake as the first phase of polling took place in Bhagalpur from where its sitting MLA Ajit Sharma faces a formidable BJP candidate Arjit Shashwat, son of BJP MP Ashwani Choubey. The fate of former Assembly Speaker and senior-most Congress leader Sadanand Singh, who is an MLA since 1969, has also been sealed from Kahalgaon.

Altogether 725 companies, including 189 companies of the CRPF and 115 companies of the CISF, were deployed to ensure free and fair elections in all the 10 districts, out of which six – Nawada, Jamui, Lakhisarai, Banka, Khagaria and Munger – are Maoist-affected.

@ Deccan Herald