Bihar: BJP on the backfoot as poll countdown begins

With Diwali on 22 October and Chhath the following week, the assembly election in Bihar, due later this year, is likely to commence in the last week of September or first week of October. That is because the new assembly will have to be constituted before 22 November. With the chief election commissioner and the Union home minister expected to visit the state next week, there is intense political activity in Bihar with speculation about the final shape of rival alliances.

The BJP, which looked to be the favourites to win the election on its own at the beginning of the year, no longer appears as confident. The ‘jungle raj’ dig of the party to remind people of the lawlessness during the 15 years between 1990 and 2005 — first under Lalu Prasad and then his wife Rabri Devi — has lost at least some of its sting.

The NDA coalition is finding it difficult to respond to the 20 years of ‘jungle raj 2’ jibe between 2005 and 2025. The past few months in particular have witnessed daylight robberies, shootouts, kidnapping of women and a brazen display of firearms.

The Opposition has not missed any opportunity to highlight the growing lawlessness in the state. On 2 June, Congress leader Alka Lamba on a visit to Patna reminded the media of the extraordinarily high number of incidents of sexual violence and killing of minor girls in just the previous fortnight.

A Class 5 student was abducted, raped and left for dead in Muzaffarpur, after her assailants had inflicted 20 injuries on her. A student in Chapra was abducted while returning from school, gangraped and killed. A two-and-a-half-year-old child was raped in West Champaran. A 16-year-old girl in Munger and a 11-year-old in Araria besides another minor girl in Sitamarhi were raped or gangraped.

Forced to go on the back foot due to growing public outrage, the BJP is making it arguably worse by switching topics and claiming that the government is creating jobs on the basis of the state public service commission announcing tests to fill up 1,250 vacancies.

Asked why the state has failed to host IT conclaves despite the BJP and the prime minister having pledged one lakh IT jobs in Bihar, the state’s IT minister claimed that his department is running campaigns against cyber fraud.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar and his two deputy chief ministers were conspicuous by their absence at the meeting of CMs convened by Niti Aayog on 24 May. They turned up the next day to attend the meeting of NDA chief ministers with the PM.

The discomfiture of the BJP has also increased after a C-Voter survey this week showed Tejashwi Yadav leading the race as the preferred chief minister with a 36.9 per cent approval rating. Nitish Kumar trailed at the second position, with an approval rating of 18.4 per cent with other contenders behind him.

Another point to note is that the prime minister’s appeal is seemingly not as strong as earlier with people recalling his failed promises and calling out the tall claims made by the BJP in manifestos before assembly elections in 2015 and 2019. These have returned to haunt the party.

The failure of the Union ministers from the state to get substantial investment or industries to Bihar and the failure of the MPs from the state to speak for the state in Parliament have not gone unnoticed. Poll pundits are as always dismissive of such trends, arguing that votes will be cast on the basis of caste loyalties and the personal appeal of the prime minister and the CM.

What cannot be dismissed from the public eye, however, is the obviously dismal healthcare in the state. The audacious claim of Union health minister J.P. Nadda in Parliament that under the NDA government 147 medical colleges had come up in Bihar — a slip of the tongue because the actual number including homoeopathy and ayurvedic colleges hovers around 20 — is no longer in public memory.

However, the new complex of Darbhanga Medical College, promised by PM Modi in 2015, has become a bit of a joke with work yet to start on the project. Similarly, a super speciality hospital building in Bhagalpur is ready for the past six months but is yet to start functioning as only 10 doctors have been appointed against the sanctioned strength of 310.

The incident of a minor girl, a victim of brutal gangrape and violence, kept waiting in an ambulance for several hours at the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) on 31 May, has severely dented the government’s image. Public protests and intervention by Congress leaders eventually forced the PMCH to admit the child, allegedly after keeping the family waiting for four hours. She was declared dead soon thereafter.

Public fury since then has prompted at least two BJP functionaries to question the role of the government. Bihar’s health minister commenting on the poor state of healthcare in neighbouring West Bengal merely served as a contrast to his indifference to the situation back home.

Amidst concerns about healthcare and education, the decade-long delay in launching an AIIMS in Darbhanga has also come back to haunt the BJP–JD(U) government. The project is said to have been stalled due to indifference, corruption, interference by the powerful land mafia and political dithering.

Announced first in the 2015 Union Budget by the then Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, AIIMS Darbhanga was envisaged to be completed within 48 months at a cost of Rs 1,264 crore. Ten years and 120 months later, the project is yet to take off.

Prime Minister Modi had finally performed the bhumi pujan in November 2024. While it was done with an eye on the 2025 assembly election, political observers are sceptical whether it would sway voters. Insiders say the project was initially proposed on unused land within the Darbhanga Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) campus.

However, the DMCH administration could only provide 80 acres — which fell well short of the required 150 acres. Acquiring the additional land would have entailed demolishing existing buildings and hostels.

Residents allege that several DMCH-affiliated doctors have illegally encroached upon government land and operate private clinics, hospitals and pathology labs, forming a powerful lobby that sabotaged the original plan.

Health minister Mangal Pandey, who has been in the news after criticising West Bengal’s healthcare system, is accused of complicity. He continued to claim, “Work on improving Bihar’s medical facilities is progressing rapidly,” even as the AIIMS Darbhanga project languished.

After years of delays, political wrangling and changes in site location — from the DMCH campus to Sobhan village on the outskirts of Darbhanga — the Bihar government handed over 187 acres to the Centre in August 2024. The original cost which was estimated to be Rs 1,261 crore is said to have escalated to over Rs 1,700 crore.

The final cost is anybody’s guess but cost escalations do make some sections happier.