Poll strategist Prashant Kishor – whose Jan Suraaj made his electoral debut Thursday, in the Bihar election‘s first phase – will have ‘no impact’ on its outcome, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav declared to NDTV’s Editor-in-Chief, Rahul Kanwal, in an exclusive on-the-road interview from Purnia district.
Yadav, the opposition alliance’s chief ministerial candidate, also dismissed Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen and indicated the battle for Bihar will come down to the two big alliances – the ruling coalition led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United and Bharatiya Janata Party, and the opposition Mahagathbandhan, fronted by his Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress.
The Jan Suraj has fielded candidates for all 243 seats, an ambitious move by a party in its first election, and it underlines what Kishor has said repeatedly – his target is to create a viable third front, an alternative to the JDU, RJD (and BJP) that have traded power over the past decades.
So, it’s clear that Kishor and the Jan Suraaj will be a factor, but can he be the ‘X factor’?
In an election special, Bihar Battleground, this week, NDTV spoke to psephologists, experts and political leaders to analyse this point and dissected the ‘Kishor factor’ with hard data.
READ | Prashant Kishor: X Factor, Spoiler Or An Also-Ran? A Breakdown
And that data suggests Kishor’s Jan Suraaj could play spoilsport equally, stealing votes from both coalitions, particularly since he seems to have traction among the young and the educated middle-class in a state that is desperately searching for jobs and an economic makeover.
The first phase of polling was held for 121 of the state’s 243 seats. Voter turnout was a record 64.66 per cent, the most in Bihar’s history, and that has been seen by Yadav as a positive sign.
Conventional wisdom does suggests high turnouts are a sign of anti-incumbency, i.e., the ruling party or coalition will be ejected, but that is not always true, as the BJP proved in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh over the past couple of years. Yadav, nevertheless, remained optimistic.
“I have positive feedback from everywhere. People want change… They want a Bihar free from corruption; they want Bihar to be a hub of IT, textiles, food processing, agro-based industry.”