Voting in the Bihar State elections begins on October 28th and India’s 3rd most populous state goes to polls. Sentiment for the current National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition of Janata Dal United (JD - U) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Nitish Kumar is mixed. While popular consensus is that governance over the last five years has been ordinary, Bihar is among the least affected States in the current COVID crisis. The State has numerous parties, key among them the BJP, JD (U), RJD (Rashtriya Janata Dal), LJP (Lok Janshakti Party), and the Indian National Congress (INC), and has also seen complex political alliances.

We begin this election analysis by looking at the voting patterns of the 2015 elections and then progress to discussing key stakeholders such as the current CM, Nitish Kumar, LJP’s Chirag Paswan, RJD’s Lalu Prasad Yadav, and his son, Tejasvi Yadav, and their strategy and influence. This is a comprehensive, data-driven electoral analysis of Bihar and is of interest to anyone who is associated with the State or of Indian Politics, in general.

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Guests: Aashish Chandorkar, Rohit Jayaraman, and Vivek Khaitan.   

Host: Roshan Cariappa