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Patna, Nov 14 (IANS) Bihar, one of the most populous and politically vibrant states, has voted emphatically and with considerable clarity on who will take over the reins of the state, ruling out any possibility of a hung assembly as was anticipated by a handful of political observers, due to the 20-year anti-incumbency wave against the Nitish government.
The 2025 mandate, in fact, is perhaps the loudest and biggest mandate for the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government.
According to the trend of results till afternoon, this is one of the biggest defeats for the alliance led by Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Congress.
A major highlight of the 2025 elections is the best-ever numbers for the BJP-JD(U) alliance, with each party maintaining a strike rate of over 80-90 per cent as per the trends.
However, their growth in support and public mandate did not happen overnight, rather it is a story of steady growth and strength in the Hindi belt since independence.
Crunching data since independence shows that the grand old party, which had secured 239 seats in the 1952 election, has been reduced to single digits in this election, marking a sharp decline in fortunes under its ‘incompetent and unstable’ leadership.
In the 1952 elections, Congress had got 41.38 percent vote share but today it has fallen below 10 percent.
It got only nine percent of the votes in the 2020 elections.
The decline in the vote base of the Congress started in the 1980s but declined drastically with the advent of the Lalu Yadav era in Bihar.
In the 1990 elections, the Congress suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Lalu Yadav-led Janata Dal (JD) and was relegated to second place for the first time.
JD got 25.61 percent vote share, while Congress was limited to 24.78 percent.
The second steep decline came with the rise of the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U).
In 2000, its vote share dropped to just 11 per cent and 23 seats, while in the subsequent assembly elections in 2005, when Nitish Kumar became the chief minister, the grand old party recorded its decline with only five per cent vote share and 10 seats.
The next election in 2010 was even worse as it could get only four seats (eight percent vote share).
The oldest party, which stood tall and remained invincible in the Hindi belt, started weakening after the rise of regional satraps like RJD and JD(U) and today, it stands at a crossroads, making its revival extremely difficult and cumbersome.
On the other hand, the BJP, which started its electoral journey in Bihar in 1980 with eight per cent vote share and 21 seats, has seen its fortunes rise steadily over the years and today, the state remains one of the party’s strongholds.
BJP’s vote share saw a steady rise from 1980 to 2010 and a sharp increase after 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to center stage.
The party’s vote share recorded a jump of eight per cent and has remained at a high level since then.
In the 2025 elections, Bihar has recorded the highest turnout of 67.13 percent, with a 9 percent increase in female voters compared to their male counterparts.
Since both Nitish Kumar and PM Modi have nurtured a women-dedicated ‘constituency’ with their women-friendly policies over the years, this increase in women voters is assumed to go their way by default.
Therefore, this election is a historic moment for the state as it has witnessed the largest turnout since independence and also a resounding mandate for the current government despite being in power for 20 years.
The only other time, when the state saw a distinct and different voting pattern, was in 1977 when JP, led by ‘Jan Nayak’ Karpoori Thakur, won the electoral contest with a thumping mandate of 42.68 per cent of the votes, defeating the Congress by a huge margin and restricting the Congress to only 57 seats.
–IANS
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