• BJP holds 240 Lok Sabha seats; support of 28 MPs keeps govt afloat
• Rahul hopes to repeat his UP success in Bihar with Lalu’s party

NEW DELHI: Two-stage state polls for the 243-seat Bihar assembly starting today (Thursday) are being seen as critical for the durability of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s minority government.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) party crucially shores up the Modi government, in which the BJP stands reduced to 240 seats from the 2024 general elections, well below the halfway mark of 272 in the Lok Sabha.

Mr Kumar’s JD(U) with 12 MPs and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu with 16 Telugu Desam MPs hold Mr Modi’s fate in their palms. Mr Modi, heading the ruling National Democ­ratic Alliance (NDA), has merely 21 MPs above a simple majority, and the two allies from Bihar and Andhra Prad­esh together add up to 28 MPs.

The NDA is widely seen as being held together in a quid pro quo arrangement whereby Mr Modi’s BJP supports the minority government of Nitish Kumar in Bihar, and he supports Mr Modi. Any setback to Mr Kumar’s hold over Bihar in the assembly polls — a scenario not being ruled out by pollsters — could adversely impact Mr Modi’s hold on Mr Kumar’s support for him. Mr Naidu too is a hard bargainer who began his political career as a Youth Congress leader.

However, much more is making the Bihar state polls on Nov 6 and 11 so crucial for everyone in the fray.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi made a significant comeback for his party in 2024, a gain that elevated him as the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha. But the laurels were won in lockstep with allies, chiefly in Uttar Pradesh where, together with the Samajwadi Party, the Congress was able to pare down Mr Modi’s numbers drastically.

Uttar Pradesh was principally responsible for the BJP’s loss of majority under Mr Modi’s watch. Rahul Gandhi is hoping for an encore, to upset the BJP in Bihar, this with the alliance he has formed with former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s son. To their advantage, Bihar is the only Hindi-speaking state where the BJP has not been able to take power from its allies.

The question is, given the dire threats and pressures on both sides, would the BJP allow the opposition to gain the leg up. Mr Gandhi not for the first time may have put the finger on the nub of the matter. He has accused the election commission of working in cahoots with and for the BJP to steal the Bihar election.

He asserts this with the support of what appears to be the election commission’s fudged voters lists in recent state polls in Haryana where the Congress was unexpectedly trounced and in Maharashtra, where a Congress alliance was allegedly robbed of victory, were rigged with the connivance of the election commission.

The core of the charge concerns the excessively powerful election body’s drive to carry out a nationwide Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter’s list like the one that was carried out amid controversy in poll-bound Bihar. Mr Modi had changed the rules for nominating the election commissioner thereby giving himself a freehand to choose his man.

The opposition alleges that the election commission is helping the BJP by deleting voters perceived to be opposed to the BJP, primarily Muslims. The issue has galvanised opposition governments in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala who have joined hands with the Congress to widen the allegation into a movement.

The most threatened by any arbitrary act to tweak the voter’s list is West Bengal where the Mamata Bannerjee government enjoys more than a handy support of Muslims. Curiously, the BJP-ruled states of Assam and Tripura have been left out of the coming round of revision of the voter’s list. Opposition has cried foul over the exclusion.

So, what is going to happen in Bihar? Its caste arithmetic is as crucial as it is murky. The state abuts Nepal with which it shares an open border. Recent events in the landlocked country are being watched in Bihar. Gen Z voters are at the heart of this election campaign in Bihar: the state has India’s largest proportion of youth population.

“Nearly 58 per cent of Bihar’s population is under 25 years of age and hence belong to the Generation Z cohort,” says The Wire. “In terms of voters, one in every four voters is a Gen Z. Of them, 1.47 million are first-time voters.”

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2025