Bihar Election 2025: Is M-Y formula dead? RJD trails as NDA's wider social engineering triumphs

The BJP did not give a ticket to a single Muslim leader, yet it is leading in 92 seats. The RJD gave half of its tickets to Yadavs; it is leading in just 27 constituencies. The M-Y or the Muslim-Yadav combination, engineered by former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav decades back, seems to be dead. The end of the M-Y politics can be understood by the fact that the ruling coalition of NDA allotted only five constituencies to the Muslims- JD(U) four and Lok Janshakti Party just one. However, the Nitish Kumar-led party is leading in 82 seats while the LJP is leading in 21. In total, the alliance with less emphasis on Muslims and Yadavs is leading in 203 seats. 

M-Y politics

RJD's obsession with the Yadavs can also be gauged by the fact that it gave half of its tickets to this community. While the Tejaswi Yadav-led party got 142 seats, it gave 50 seats to the Yadav community and 18 to the Muslims. The opposition alliance of Mahagathbandhan allotted 67 tickets to the Yadavs and 30 to the Muslims. Despite allotting tickets to the M-Y combination in such a big way, the alliance lost miserably. 

 Muslim-Yadav combination

On the other hand, the NDA expanded its base and allotted more tickets to other OBC communities, the EBC, and the forward castes. The JD(U) gave 19 tickets to the Luv-Kush, or the Koeri-Kurmi, communities, besides 4 to the Dhanuk caste. It fielded 12 from EBC, 10 from Dalits, and 13 from forward caste communities. The Nitish Kumar-led party also gave tickets to Dhobis, Mushahars, Paswans, and people from the Ravidas community. Thus, it worked diligently on social engineering in a true sense and kept in mind the proportion and significance of each community. 

NDA social engineering

Similarly, the BJP also emphasized social engineering and caste calibration and distributed tickets accordingly. Consequently, fewer tickets were allotted to the Yadav community. BJP MLA Ram Surat Rai was denied a ticket from Aurai. He openly acknowledged that Yadav lawmakers had borne the brunt of the party’s new arithmetic. He was replaced by Rama Nishad, wife of former MP Ajay Nishad, who contested the Muzaffarpur Lok Sabha seat on a Congress ticket after being denied a BJP nomination earlier this year. Similarly, seven-time MLA and former Speaker Nand Kishore Yadav was replaced by Ratnesh Kushwaha in Patna Sahib. The saffron party fielded 49 upper-caste candidates and 52 from OBC, EBC, and Dalit categories. It aligned with NDA's renewed emphasis on social cohesion within its dependable voter clusters.

NDA's emphasis was less on social innovation and more on social reinforcement. It was a calculated effort to rally the loyal, protect the predictable, and secure the state once more on the strength of its core. It came out of the dependence on the Yadav community and broke the age-old M-Y combination of the RJD.