The opposition RJD in Bihar stunned the ruling NDA on Saturday, after its young candidate Amar Paswan defeated his nearest BJP rival Baby Kumari by a massive margin of 36,658 votes in the by-poll to Bochahan assembly seat.
Paswan (33), who made his debut from the reserved seat last represented by his late father Musafir, polled 82,547 votes while Kumari, a former MLA who had proverbially started off as the favourite, got only 45,889 votes.
Tejashwi Yadav, who had spearheaded the RJD's high-voltage campaign for the by-election, expressed delight over the victory, which raises his party's tally to 76 in the 243-strong assembly.
“The Bochahan by-poll result is an indictment, by the electorate, of the double engine NDA government that is made up of four parties, and which has left education, health, law and order and agriculture in tatters on account of its anti-people policies,” Yadav tweeted.
The RJD had won 75 seats in the 2020 assembly polls, the highest for any party, though it now has a tally one less than that of the BJP, which had recently inducted three turncoat MLAs of the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP).
VIP is headed by Bollywood set designer-turned-politician Mukesh Sahani and Musafir Paswan had won the seat on its ticket. The party this time fielded Gita Devi, the daughter of a multiple-term MLA Ramai Ram, who has been unsuccessful at the hustings in the last couple of elections.
The VIP candidate finished a distant third, polling only 29,726 votes, less than the difference between the winner and the runner-up.
Notably, the VIP was an NDA constituent in 2020 which it ceased to be about a month ago, after the BJP got Sahani expelled from the Nitish Kumar cabinet.
Sahani, who had earned his ministerial berth at the BJP's instance despite having lost his own seat in assembly elections, ended up treading on the toes of his benefactor, when he launched vitriolic attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath during the polls in the adjoining state.
The BJP seemed confident of wresting the seat from Sahani's party since the VIP is still seen as light weight and Baby Kumari, who won Bochahan in 2015 contesting as an Independent, is known to be quite popular in the area.
Indeed, she led by a few hundred votes in the first of the 25 rounds of counting, but began trailing thereafter and the gap only went on widening.
The treatment meted out to Sahani, which was followed by the humiliating manner in which late Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan's Delhi house was vacated, appears to have resulted in a backlash from the extremely backward classes and the Dalits.
Locals also claimed that rivalry among BJP leaders of Muzaffarpur district, under which Bochahan falls, had estranged the influential Bhumihar community, who have traditionally supported the saffron party.
Tejashwi Yadav is said to have cashed in on the contradictions to buttress the formidable base his father Lalu Prasad had built and come out with a winning formula.
