2025 Bihar polls: the Mahagathbandhan’s EBC manoeuvre
The Mahagathbandhan is aggressively wooing extremely backward classes (EBCs), a loose amalgamation of smaller groups that are the backbone of Kumar’s support
In the 2020 Bihar assembly polls, the Opposition’s Grand Alliance fell agonisingly short of the majority mark in the assembly — the difference between the winning and the losing coalitions was just around 12,000 votes — largely because smaller groups and weaker castes carried memories of Yadav dominance during the RJD heydays and counter-mobilised in the dying days of the campaign. This exposed a weakness for the otherwise robust regional party — despite its solid voter base of Yadavs, Muslims and some dominant groups, it struggles to attract wider support across castes. The only election it won in the last two decades was when Nitish Kumar helped stitch together a broad coalition of weaker caste groups in 2015.
This time, the Mahagathbandhan is aggressively wooing the extremely backward classes (EBCs), a loose amalgamation of smaller groups that are the backbone of Kumar’s support. A major step in this direction was taken on Thursday when the alliance named Vikassheel Insan Party chief Mukesh Sahani as its deputy CM candidate for the polls next month. The announcement — alongside naming Tejashwi Yadav as the CM face — is an attempt to stanch infighting and dispel the image of the Opposition as a divided house more focussed on squabbling than fighting elections. But it is also an outreach to the EBCs (Sahani comes from the boatmen community) to hive off a chunk of Kumar’s support. The EBCs aren’t a monolith, though, and Sahani is somewhat of an untested entity; his party won only four assembly seats (and no parliamentary seats) in the past. Is an electoral manoeuvre enough to drive apart the JD(U) and a base it has nurtured for decades? November 14 will hold the answer.
In the 2020 Bihar assembly polls, the Opposition’s Grand Alliance fell agonisingly short of the majority mark in the assembly — the difference between the winning and the losing coalitions was just around 12,000 votes — largely because smaller groups and weaker castes carried memories of Yadav dominance during the RJD heydays and counter-mobilised in the dying days of the campaign. This exposed a weakness for the otherwise robust regional party — despite its solid voter base of Yadavs, Muslims and some dominant groups, it struggles to attract wider support across castes. The only election it won in the last two decades was when Nitish Kumar helped stitch together a broad coalition of weaker caste groups in 2015.
This time, the Mahagathbandhan is aggressively wooing the extremely backward classes (EBCs), a loose amalgamation of smaller groups that are the backbone of Kumar’s support. A major step in this direction was taken on Thursday when the alliance named Vikassheel Insan Party chief Mukesh Sahani as its deputy CM candidate for the polls next month. The announcement — alongside naming Tejashwi Yadav as the CM face — is an attempt to stanch infighting and dispel the image of the Opposition as a divided house more focussed on squabbling than fighting elections. But it is also an outreach to the EBCs (Sahani comes from the boatmen community) to hive off a chunk of Kumar’s support. The EBCs aren’t a monolith, though, and Sahani is somewhat of an untested entity; his party won only four assembly seats (and no parliamentary seats) in the past. Is an electoral manoeuvre enough to drive apart the JD(U) and a base it has nurtured for decades? November 14 will hold the answer.
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