Bihar's 'Mission-40':NDA's 'social engineering' to defeat 'INDIA'

The names of candidates are being announced in all the states regarding the Lok Sabha elections 2024. BJP is trying to set the equation on each seat to complete its Mission 370. After continuous brainstorming in Bihar, an agreement was reached on seat sharing in NDA and after that, apart from Chirag Paswan's party, all the parties have also finalized the names of their candidates. Caste equation has been considered very important in the politics of Bihar. Even in ticket distribution, everyone keeps an eye on which party has fielded how many candidates of which caste.

Just a few months ago, caste census was conducted in Bihar by the Grand Alliance government. Nitish Kumar has been doing social engineering in Bihar for a long time. BJP tried this model of his in UP also. In such a situation, the question is that this time caste calculation or social engineering has given more importance in ticket distribution, or has any new strategy been made?

There are 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar. Out of which candidates have been announced for 35. Chirag Paswan will take decision on 5 seats out of which three seats are reserved for SC. In such a situation, the caste mathematics of 38 seats has come to the fore.

While selecting candidates, BJP's focus has been on upper caste and Yadav candidates. At the same time, Janata Dal United is trying to woo OBC and EBC voters. To a large extent, the responsibility of wooing the Dalit voters has been placed on the shoulders of Chirag Paswan and Jitan Ram Manjhi.

Going beyond the caste census data, BJP has once again gambled on its traditional upper caste vote bank. Bharatiya Janata Party has given chance to 10 out of 17 upper caste candidates. However, after BJP fielded the upper castes, JDU has fielded only three upper caste candidates and JDU's focus has been on its core voters, extremely backward castes and backward castes. 11 out of 16 candidates come from these two categories of JDU.

If we look at the list of candidates announced by Nitish Kumar's party, the party has tried to find a way between the need for alliance, social engineering and caste data. While Nitish Kumar has deviated from the caste census figures and fielded only one Muslim candidate, he has tried to give representation on the basis of caste census figures by fielding 11 out of 16 OBC and EBC candidates.