Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) supremo Nitish Kumar has struck an alliance with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) once again, making it the fourth time in the past decade that he has switched sides.

In the current 243-member Bihar Assembly, Nitish-led JD(U) has 45 MLAs and the BJP 78, taking the combine’s tally to 123, with one more Independent expected to support it, taking them over the 122-member majority mark. The RJD along with the Congress and the Left parties have a combined 114 MLAs, eight short of a majority.

Electorally, it’s a considerable loss for the INDIA bloc in a state that has been dominated by the JD(U) both in the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. For the JD(U) and BJP, it’s a tried-and-tested alliance that fared well in the 2019 general elections and the 2020 Assembly polls.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the NDA in Bihar comprised the BJP, JD(U) and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). Of the 40 parliamentary seats in the state, the BJP and JD(U) each contested 17 seats and the LJP six seats. With a combined vote share of 54.34%, the alliance swept the state, winning 39 of the 40 seats. While the BJP and LJP won all the seats they contested, the JD(U) fell short in 1 seat, which went to the Congress.

It was a struggle for the RJD-led alliance, which included the Congress and three other minor parties, which together won just 1 seat, despite securing 31.23% of the vote share. While the Congress that had contested 9 seats won that 1 seat, the RJD drew a blank in the 19 seats it contested.

The Left parties failed to win a single seat among the 19 they contested.

Notably, the RJD’s zero tally was despite it getting 15.68% of the votes, with the BJP at 24.06% and the JD(U) at 22.26%.

In 2014, the first Modi wave election, the JD(U) had contested 38 seats independently, but won just 2 with 16.04% of the vote share. The NDA, this time comprising the BJP, LJP and one other regional party, had won 31 seats, with more than double the JD(U)’s vote share, at 39.41%. The RJD-Congress-NCP alliance had managed just 7 seats, despite 30.24% of the votes.

The 2009 Lok Sabha polls had been another example of the BJP-JD(U) alliance working effectively. Together, they had won 32 seats and 37.97% of the vote share. The JD(U) had secured 20 of the 25 seats it contested then, while the BJP, its junior partner at the time, had won 12 of 15 it contested. The Congress, which came to power at the Centre in that election, had recorded yet another dismal performance in Bihar, winning just 2 of the 37 seats it fought, and 10.26% of the vote. The then RJD-LJP alliance had won 4 seats, with 25.81% of the vote share.

The Congress, in fact, hasn’t been a major player in Bihar’s Lok Sabha polls since 1984, while the BJP’s emergence as a significant party in the state began in the 1990s when the Janata Dal was a leading force in the state. Once the Janata Dal split to give rise to the RJD in 1999 and later the JD(U) in 2003, these regional parties began to make their mark in the state’s parliamentary seats, until the BJP’s landslide victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

In the 2020 Assembly polls, the NDA included the BJP, JD(U), LJP and two smaller parties in the state. The alliance narrowly crossed the 122-seat majority mark in the 243-member House, with 125 MLAs and 37.26% of the vote share. What was the most striking aspect of the result was the BJP’s emergence as the party with the second largest number of seats and vote share, at 74 seats (from 110 contested) and 19.46% votes. The JD(U) was the third largest, with 43 seats from 115 contested and 15.39% of the votes, but the BJP let Nitish continue as CM, for his sixth term.

The Mahagathbandhan alliance between the RJD, Congress and Left gave the NDA a tough fight in the 2020 polls, winning 110 seats and 37.23% of the votes (just 0.03% shy of the NDA’s tally). The RJD, in particular, recorded a strong performance, emerging as the largest party, with 75 seats from 144 contested and 23.11% vote share. While the Left parties won 16 seats with 4.64% of the votes, the Congress was the laggard in the alliance, managing just 19 seats out of the 70 it contested and securing 9.48% of the votes.

Less than two years later though, Nitish left the NDA to join the Mahagathbandhan government with the RJD and Congress.

In the 2015 Assembly polls, the JD(U) had struck an alliance with long-time rival RJD, along with the Congress. This was just a year after quitting the NDA and contesting the 2014 Lok Sabha elections alone (to dismal results, as noted above).

The result was a resounding win for the Mahagathbandhan, which won 178 seats and 41.84% of the vote share, in a big boost for the Opposition still stunned after the 2014 Modi wave BJP win in the Lok Sabha. The RJD was again the largest party in the 2015 Assembly polls in terms of seats, at 80, with 18.35% of the votes. The JD(U) wasn’t too far off though, with 71 seats and 16.83% of the votes. Both parties had contested 101 seats each. The Congress, too, had performed well, winning 27 of the 41 seats it contested, from 6.66% of the vote share.

The NDA had managed a combined 58 seats and 34.08% of the vote share. The BJP alone had won 53 of the 157 seats it contested as the senior member of an alliance comprising minor regional parties. The BJP’s performance though was noteworthy given that it was the clear leader in terms of vote share, at 24.42%, more than 6% points ahead of the RJD.

Since 2000, when Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar, the JD(U) and RJD remained the dominant parties in the Assembly polls, till the rise of the BJP, though it has never had a CM in Bihar. The Congress, on the other hand, has been on consistent decline over the past five Assembly elections.