The INDIA block’s performance in Bihar in the Lok Sabha elections was affected as it made “certain mistakes”, including in ticket distribution, CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya said on Saturday. He also did not rule out the “Nitish Kumar factor” being also a reason for the bloc getting fewer seats than expected in the polls.
The INDIA bloc, comprising Congress, RJD, VIP and Left parties, won 9 out of 40 seats, while 30 went to the NDA. One seat was won by Congress leader Pappu Yadav, who contested as an independent candidate. Bihar Chief Minister Kumar, on whose initiative the INDIA bloc was formed, left the alliance before the general elections and joined the NDA.
In an interview with PTI, Bhattacharya expected the RJD, Congress and Left parties, including his CPI (ML), to do better in the assembly elections in the state next year.
In Purnia, Pappu Yadav contested and won as an independent candidate as the RJD refused to give up the seat to the Congress. The CPI(ML) had contested the Siwan seat, but the RJD fought and finished third, with the JD(U) winning, said Bhattacharya, whose party won two seats – Arrah and Karakat.
“Certain mistakes probably had a cascading effect. They affected several seats. To give just one example in Purnia, Pappu Yadav managed to win the seat. But it is unthinkable for an official RJD candidate to have less than 30,000 votes in this type of election. polarized, the entire party supports that candidate with all its weight,” he stated.
The RJD refused to give up the Purnia seat to the Congress and fielded Bima Bharti, who could get only 27,000 votes against Pappu Yadav. “This has probably affected a large number of seats, perhaps Araria, Supaul and Madhepura,” Bhattacharya said.
Similarly, the CPI(ML) had a very strong claim on Siwan and “I received feedback from all sources that with an ML candidate in the contest, we could have won Siwan,” he said. “That probably could have secured a number of southern commission seats – Siwan, Chhapra and Maharajganj, may be even Gopalganj. So these are some mistakes, probably avoidable mistakes, that cost us some seats (in Bihar),” he said Bhattacharya.
“But more than that, I think we have to find out why again we could not do well in north Bihar. If you look at the Assembly election results, our best performance was in south Bihar. Once again (in the Lok Sabha polls), our best performance has been in south Bihar,” he said.
The Left leader further said that while it was expected that the JD(U) or the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) would suffer losses and the BJP would emerge unscathed, the results were different. “It is the BJP that has suffered the biggest loss in Bihar,” Bhattacharya said.
In the 2024 polls, the BJP fought on 17 seats and won 12, up from 17 in 2019, while the JD(U) contested 16 seats this time and won 12, up from 16 in 2019. “So, there are things in “Almost all the pollsters, including those who got it right about UP, got it wrong about Bihar. It’s probably the Nitish Kumar factor,” he said.
(With input from PTI)
