New Delhi: After nearly 15 hours of counting and an almost neck-to-neck competition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) made it past the majority mark of the Bihar assembly election in the early hours of Wednesday and now Nitish Kumar is all set to be sworn in as the state’s chief minister for the seventh time.
Hours ahead of the official declaration of results, news channels spoke of a close fight that was tilted in favour of the NDA, as they waited for the final numbers. This was after a day of seesaw results tilting the contest one way or the other and news anchors going whichever way the wind was blowing.
“What a day it has been for the BJP,’’ declared Rahul Shiv Shankar on Times Now, “What a day it has been for the NDA,’’ he added, pointing out that the BJP has swept the bypolls across the country. “And Times-Now C-Voter got it absolutely right,” he boasted.
The Times Now C-voter exit polls, however, had predicted a win for the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar with 123 seats while NDA was expected to trail by 110 seats.
CNN-News18 analysed NDA’s win. Anchor Mariya Shakil asked BJP spokesperson Amit Malviya if he thought it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had ensured the victory.
“That goes without saying…there was a talk of anti-incumbency. The only man who stood between the anti-incumbency and the NDA government was Prime Minister Modi. His rallies were well attended and they spoke well about him even when they didn’t speak as well for the state government,” he said.
The anchor added that a large turnout of women voters also worked to their favour.
“Women as a constituency has definitely emerged in Bihar,” remarked Sanjay Kumar, former director of Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. He added, “But whether youth has emerged as a factor, remains a question mark.”
The debate on NDTV 24×7 focused on the role of Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party and Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM as “vote-cutters” in the elections.
Anchor Sreenivasan Jain questioned Congress’s Supriya Shrinate on the AIMIM which the grand-old party had termed, “BJP’s Team B”.
“I maintain that position even today, because if you see the Seemanchal belt where the AIMIM has been able to bag five seats they could’ve well conceded and an anti-BJP force could’ve won,” Shrinate said.
BJP’s Pradeep Kumar Singh, however, denied the possibility that his party had formed a backdoor alliance with AIMIM. “It is the LJP that has ruined it for the Mahagathbandhan,” he said.
On India Today, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi responded to the allegations of ‘vote-cutting’, and even hit back at anchor Rajdeep Sardesai, who had tweeted that the AIMIM had dented the chances of the Mahagathbandhan.
“What is this language from a senior journalist…parties win, parties lose in elections. You are assuming that the voter who has voted for me is a life-long hostage and labourer in the one political party. Do you want to keep democracy alive or remain hostage to one political party?” asked Owaisi.
He added, “Till the day I die, these baseless charges will be made against me. So what? I believe in India’s democracy and by contesting elections I am strengthening it.”
On ABP News, anchor Rubika Liyaquat brought up the allegations of vote fraud by the RJD and the returning officers allegedly being pressured by Nitish Kumar to not hand out victory certificates.
Responding to Liyaquat, BJP leader and former Bihari actor Ravi Kishen said, “Let them go…the results are there for everyone to see. Even they know they are losing….Everything is crystal clear, we are in 2020 at present. This is not like the time when there was ‘jungle raj’ in the state… they can knock on whatever doors they like but the public has made their decision….”
Kishen added, “Truth is winning and the jungle raj is losing.”
Anchor Sudhir Chaudhary walked viewers through the math of the elections with his graph showing the NDA leading with 123 seats and the MGB with 113 seats on Zee News.
It seemed as though Chaudhary missed watching the IPL finals between the Mumbai Indians and the Delhi Capitals as he made a cricket analogy: “Like the IPL finals, here each seat is equivalent to every run. And in the contest this time, each run is important.”
“This match will go down to the wire — to the last over and the last ball,” he added.
