Clinging onto the slightest hope, RJD MP Manoj Jha said the NDA’s celebration of a likely win in the 2025 Bihar elections is premature. Jha claimed that the trends showing that the NDA is set to register a big win can shift, are in their initial stage, and “such trends change”.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) appeared to register a landslide victory in Bihar, opening up impressive leads in more than 180 of the state’s 243 assembly seats, with early trends also indicating that the saffron party was on track to post its biggest tally.
Jha said that the early trends are like ‘low-hanging fruit,’ and the celebrations in the NDA camp are merely a “psychological game”.
“We found that in more than 65-70 seats, the margin is less than 3000-5000 votes, these are like ‘low-hanging fruit,’ and we are sure that the situation can change in those seats,” Jha said, still hopeful for a different result.
“The vote count is extremely slow… This is just an initial trend; we have seen such trends change by the end…” he added.
However, Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav blamed the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) for trends predicting Mahagathbandhan’s dismal loss in the Bihar elections.
Launching a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party, Yadav said that the BJP is not a party, but “deceit”.
“The game that SIR played in Bihar will no longer be possible in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, UP, and other places now because this electoral conspiracy has been exposed,” he wrote in a post on X.
“From now on, we will not let them play this game. Like CCTV, our ‘PPTV’ meaning ‘PDA Sentinel’ will stay vigilant and thwart the BJP’s intentions. BJP is not a party, it is deceit,” he added.
Accepting the early trends as people’s mandate, Congress leader and Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar said, “We will accept whatever mandate the people have given. We will use this as a lesson to devise a new strategy for the future.”
Congress MP Akhilesh Prasad Singh said that the party will introspect where it lagged and congratulated Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the NDA for the win.
“There shouldn’t have been friendly fights – RJD’s Sanjay Yadav and our party’s Krishna Alavarru will better explain why we performed poorly in the elections,” he said.
Senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot claimed that democracy is in danger.
“The same situation that arose in Maharashtra after Haryana has arisen here…The way they use money power, people cannot even imagine…” he said. Gehlot also accused the Election Commission of supporting the NDA. “If there are no fair elections, that is also vote theft…”
“During the elections, ₹10,000 were deposited into the accounts of 1 crore 35 lakh women. What has happened to the Election Commission?” he questioned.
Meanwhile, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said the NDA are leading by a rather large margin. “But let’s wait for the Election Commission to discuss and disclose the results.”
Tharoor said that he is sure that the Congress party has a responsibility to study in detail the causes, “but remember, we were not the senior partner in the alliance and that RJD also has to look carefully at its own performance.”
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