Prime Minister Narendra Modi fired multiple taunts at beaten rivals Rashtriya Janata Dal Friday evening, including appropriating the term ‘M-Y’ – referring to its traditional vote bank of Muslims and Yadavs – and re-naming it ‘Mahila (women) and youth’. “… this is the new ‘M-Y’ formula in Bihar,” the PM intoned, to ecstatic chants of ‘phir ek baar, NDA sarkar’, and ‘Modi, Modi’.
He also ‘banished’ the “corrupt” RJD-Congress alliance and raked up, more than once, the ‘jungle raj’ label that other BJP leaders and he used to refer disparagingly to the law-and-order situation when the former party was in power with Lalu Prasad Yadav as Chief Minister.
“When I talked about jungle raj (while on the campaign trail) … the RJD did not oppose it but the Congress did. Today I say again, the corrupt government will not return. It will not return.”
The jabs came hours after the BJP and its ally, the Janata Dal United of Nitish Kumar, recorded a thumping win over the Mahagathbandhan, the alliance led by the RJD and Congress.
In fact, so dominant was the win the election ceased to be a contest less than two hours into counting. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance was on course to win over 200 of Bihar’s 243 seats as the Prime Minister thundered out his victory speech at the party HQ in Delhi.
The NDA’s mega win was powered by overwhelming support from the Muslim and Yadavs, both of which usually vote for the RJD. For this election too some exit polls – while predicting a clear win for the BJP-JDU – said over 70 per cent of the ‘M-Y’ vote bank would continue to do so.
As it turned out, though, both voted for the BJP-led alliance, delivering a significant blow to the RJD’s hopes of repeating its outstanding showing from the 2020 election, when it won 75 seats on its own to become the single-largest party in the Bihar Assembly.