The uneasy alliance between the Janata Dal (United), Rashtriya Janata Dal, and the Congress has crossed yet another hurdle with the finalisation of a seat-sharing formula that leaves all three parties as more or less equal partners in the Bihar assembly elections. The JD(U) and RJD will contest 100 seats each leaving 40 seats to the Congress. That Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad have settled for so few seats is a reflection of their weaknesses and the desperate nature of the political battle they are now pitted in. In the 2010 polls, the JD(U) had contested 141 seats in alliance with the BJP, while the RJD contested 168 seats in partnership with Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP).

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Nitish is still recovering from the comprehensive defeat he suffered in the Lok Sabha polls where the JD(U) trailed both the BJP and the RJD-Congress alliance in vote share and seats. Lalu, barred from electoral politics after conviction in the fodder scam, will certainly rue his inability to wrest a better bargain for the RJD. Since the Lok Sabha elections, when the RJD-Congress alliance secured 28.8 per cent of votes against the JD(U)’s 15.8 per cent, the Congress has drawn closer to the JD(U), adding to Lalu’s discomfiture and restricting his bargaining power. The anointment of Nitish as the alliance’s chief ministerial candidate in June despite the RJD’s initial reluctance was perhaps the more bitter pill that Lalu has had to swallow than the 100 seats he is now left with. Having allowed himself to be upstaged by his erstwhile bête noire at that stage, and out of power for 10 years now, Lalu appears to have made peace with his shrunken political space for the time being.

Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar - PTI

However, it is the Congress that has earned a windfall. In 2010, it contested all 243 seats but could win just four seats with a vote share of 8.38 per cent. But in a closely fought election, both Nitish and Lalu appear to have reconciled that the Congress has enough votes to play the spoiler act, if it so wishes. Where trouble could crop up for the alliance is in the actual allocation of seats and the possibility of cadres revolting. The JD(U) with 100-odd sitting seats can be expected to retain them. This could cause heartburn among RJD leaders. However, even the BJP could face its share of troubles in seat-sharing talks with its allies. Already Paswan’s LJP, Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha, and Upendra Khushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samata Party are punching beyond their weight and making demands that the BJP will find difficult to accommodate.

The Bihar assembly elections is the first time that major non-BJP parties are coming together in an alliance to stall the saffron party’s juggernaut. That leaders like Nitish and Lalu have shed their mutual antagonism, and any remnants of anti-Congressism, to fight on a common platform signifies the emphatic manner in which the centre of gravity in Indian politics has shifted in favour of the BJP. For PM Modi, winning Bihar in 2015, and UP in 2017, is key to asserting his political domination over the country and wresting the Rajya Sabha from the Opposition. But Modi also realises that recapturing the electoral mood of 2014 has become difficult. While the electoral arithmetic of consolidating individual vote shares is impeccable and makes a case for the JD(U)-RJD-Congress combine, this does not factor in the task of convincing sceptical voters and dissenting cadres of respective parties.