Three parties that have been reduced to dust by the Grand Alliance juggernaut that seems to have hurtled through Bihar in the last month and a half are the NDA allies Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) of Union Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RSLP) of Union Minister Upendra Kuswaha and the Hindustan Awam Morcha (Secular) of former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi. Till the time of writing, as per data uploaded on the website of Election Commission of India, LJP was leading in one seat and RSLP and HAM on two seats each with Manjhi himself trailing in one of the two seats where he contested - Makhdumpur, a reserved constituency. He was, however, leading in Imamgunj. In Alauli, Pashupati Paras of LJP was trailing, in Kalyanpur his party colleague Prince Raj was trailing and in Sonbarsha, Sarita Paswan was trailing. All three are relatives of Paswan. In Narkatia, Kuswaha’s relative Sant Singh Kuswaha was trailing by more than 10,000 votes. The bloodbath of the NDA allies on whom BJP was banking for its forward-backward winning combination, means that both Paswan and Kuswaha, will have reduced clout in the union government of which both are a part. This also shows that the pre-ticket distribution discord in the NDA—the BJP allies demanded more seats - was not really based on the ground strengths of the feuding allies and the biggest casualty in the NDA camp is likely to be the image of Amit Shah as BJP’s master strategist.
